Congress Sent Trump a Russia Sanctions Sledgehammer. He Still Has Not Swung It.

Since Trump and Xi wrapped their Washington summit this week extending the tariff truce to January 10 and cutting duties to 7.5 percent, a second, quieter test of Trump's resolve has been sitting on his desk since mid-September: a sweeping Russia sanctions bill that Congress handed him with broad bipartisan support.

The Bill Nobody's Talking About

The House passed the Lindsey O. Graham Sanctioning Russia and Iran Act of 2026, named for South Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham, the week of September 14, according to Newsweek. The White House said at the time that advisers would recommend Trump sign it. As of this week, no source confirms he has.

The bill is genuinely aggressive on paper. It authorizes tariffs of up to 500 percent on Russian goods with no floor, and secondary tariffs up to 100 percent on countries buying Russian oil and gas, aimed squarely at China and India, per Newsweek's reporting. But Section 115 lets Trump waive any of it if he certifies doing so serves the "national interests of the United States." Congress built the hammer. Trump decides whether it ever touches a nail.

Trump's Track Record on Russia Isn't Encouraging

There's a reason skeptics are watching closely. After a two-hour call with Vladimir Putin on May 19, 2025, produced no ceasefire and no fresh sanctions, Britain and the EU moved on their own against Moscow, according to Newsweek. Five days later, Russia launched what was then the war's largest aerial assault on Ukraine. Trump said Putin had "gone absolutely CRAZY" and floated new sanctions. Three days after that, he dropped it.

That pattern is the entire basis for the "TACO" label, Trump Always Chickens Out, that's now attached to nearly every high-stakes standoff he enters, whether it's Russia, China, or tariff threats generally.

China Arrives With Its Own Cards, and Its Own Problems

On the China side, the summit concluded with a truce extension already reported, but the underlying leverage picture hasn't changed. China controls roughly 70 percent of global rare earth mining and about 90 percent of refining capacity, according to Newsweek. When Beijing restricted rare earth exports last year in response to U.S. tariffs, it forced Washington back to the table. Xu Qinduo, senior fellow at the Beijing-based Pangoal Institution, made the point directly: "The U.S. does not have all the cards. The fact is the Chinese side also has their own cards."

Xu also argued China's manufacturing base and purchasing-power-parity economic weight raise real doubts about whether Washington can confront Beijing head-on, and framed China's restraint on tariffs and military action as evidence of what he called responsible great-power behavior.

Miles Yu, director of the Hudson Institute's China Center and former chief China strategist to ex-Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, pushed back on the idea that the summit was empty theater, arguing there was real substance behind U.S. efforts to pressure Beijing even if the ceremonial optics suggested otherwise, per Newsweek.

Xi isn't negotiating from unlimited strength either. Senior Chinese military figures have reportedly been purged on corruption and disloyalty charges in recent months, according to Spreely News, complicating Xi's ability to project the total command he's cultivated with rhetoric about a coming "new era" and the "Thucydides Trap," the idea that a rising power inevitably shoves aside a declining one.

An Unproven but Serious Allegation

Spreely News also reported that Chinese satellite data has allegedly helped Iran target U.S. forces, with deadly results. That claim is unproven in the available reporting, no U.S. agency, court, or named intelligence official has confirmed it on the record, and it should be read as an allegation, not an established fact.

One Detail That's Already Out of Date

Spreely News's framing of the summit's "immediate agenda" cited November 10 as the truce deadline driving the talks. The summit extended the truce to January 10, which supersedes that earlier reporting. Some pre-summit commentary was locked in before the actual outcome landed.

The Actual Test Ahead

The fair case for Trump's approach is that waiver authority isn't weakness, it's flexibility, and a president juggling China, Russia, and Iran simultaneously has legitimate reasons to hold fire rather than trigger a trade war on three fronts at once. Section 115's national-interest waiver exists because Congress itself recognized that blunt-force sanctions can boomerang onto U.S. allies and markets.

But that argument only holds if Trump eventually uses the authority when it counts. Right now, the sanctions bill sits unsigned in available reporting, the China truce runs to January 10, and no source has confirmed whether Trump intends to impose the secondary tariffs on Russian oil buyers that would hit China and India hardest. Whether he signs the bill, and whether he ever pulls that trigger against Beijing and New Delhi, is the next concrete marker to watch.