DA Editorial Desk | Dhruba Deka
The warmth that once defined the India-US relationship has cooled considerably over the past year, and the latest chapter in that story arrived this month in the form of legislation with a deceptively narrow name: the Lindsey O. Graham Sanctioning Russia and Iran Act of 2026. Signed by President Trump after clearing the US Senate and, more narrowly, the House of Representatives by a 214-211 vote, the law’s stated purpose is to sanction Russia’s leadership, energy sector and the vessels that evade existing restrictions. Its practical edge, however, points elsewhere. The legislation grants the US President discretionary authority to impose tariffs of up to 100 per cent on countries that continue purchasing Russian oil and gas in significant volumes — and India, alongside China, sits squarely in that line of fire.
The numbers explain why. According to the Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air, India accounted for roughly 37 per cent of Russia’s crude oil exports between December 2022 and August 2026, second only to China. That is not a marginal trading relationship; it is a structural shift. Before the Ukraine war, Russian oil made up under 15 per cent of India’s crude imports, with the Gulf supplying more than half. Today those proportions have essentially reversed, driven by the straightforward economics of discounted Russian crude feeding an economy of 1.4 billion people. Indian officials, including trade analyst Ajay Srivastava of the Global Trade Research Initiative, have made this argument consistently and without apology: India buys Russian oil to secure affordable energy, not to bankroll a war.
That argument has merit, and it deserves to be stated plainly rather than defensively. Energy security for a developing economy of India’s scale is not a diplomatic nicety — it is a precondition for growth, for keeping fuel and fertiliser costs manageable, and for shielding ordinary households from global price shocks. India did not create the discounted Russian crude market; it responded rationally to an opportunity that Western sanctions themselves helped generate, since Moscow’s crude had to find buyers somewhere once European markets closed. Washington’s frustration is legitimate from its own strategic vantage point, but India’s calculus has been equally coherent from its own.
What makes this new law particularly unsettling is its timing. It arrives barely seven months after Washington and New Delhi appeared to be repairing the relationship — a February 2026 trade framework that saw the US remove a 25 per cent penalty tariff tied to Russian oil purchases and reduce its broader reciprocal tariff on Indian goods to 18 per cent. That framework represented real, hard-won progress after a bruising 2025 in which combined tariffs on Indian exports had reached a punishing 50 per cent. The new sanctions bill does not immediately undo that progress — it authorises tariffs rather than mandating them, and the President retains discretion to grant waivers or exemptions — but it reintroduces exactly the kind of uncertainty that Indian exporters, from textiles and gems to pharmaceuticals and engineering goods, had hoped was behind them.
This uncertainty is itself a cost, independent of whether the 100 per cent tariff is ever actually applied. Businesses planning shipments, signing contracts and pricing goods for the American market cannot operate confidently under the shadow of a discretionary tariff that could be invoked at a president’s judgment. If New Delhi’s trade negotiators have one clear task in the months ahead, it is to press Washington for durable clarity — a binding understanding, not a revocable grace period contingent on India’s energy choices remaining acceptable to Congress from one session to the next.
India’s response so far has combined firmness with restraint: officials have signalled that energy diversification remains a genuine priority even as they resist being pressured into abrupt changes dictated by Washington’s legislative calendar. That balance is the right one. New Delhi should continue broadening its crude sourcing on its own terms and timeline, as it has already begun doing, while making clear — through diplomatic channels and, if necessary, through calibrated reciprocal measures on American goods — that Indian trade policy will not simply bend to threats issued an ocean away.
The deeper question this episode raises is about the durability of the India-US partnership itself, one built over two decades on shared strategic interests in the Indo-Pacific, defence cooperation, and technology ties that both countries have invested in seriously. That foundation is not erased by one contentious piece of legislation, however aggressively worded. But foundations require maintenance, and Washington’s habit of treating tariff threats as routine leverage against a partner it also courts strategically sends a mixed signal that New Delhi is right to take seriously. A relationship this consequential, for both economies and for the wider balance of power in Asia, deserves steadier footing than a bill named after its Senate sponsor and renewed every time Moscow fails to make peace.