President Trump signed an executive order Friday waiving new Russia sanctions under the Graham Act before they take effect, arguing the step serves U.S. national interests amid high fuel costs.

The Hill reported that Trump moved Friday evening to waive sanctions, restrictions, and duties in the recently enacted package before those measures could bite.

In the order, Trump said he had already sent Congress a certification that the waiver serves the national interests of the United States. The same law that built the penalties also gave the president clear authority to pause them for foreign parties when he judges the country needs it.

That sequence matters. Trump signed the sanctions package into law only last month. It was posthumously dedicated to the late Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) and aimed to squeeze the Kremlin over its years-long military campaign against Ukraine through tariffs on top Russian energy buyers and anyone helping Moscow dodge earlier penalties.

Within weeks, Trump used the waiver power written into the statute itself.

National interests certification went to Congress first

Trump’s order stated the legal basis without flourish.

"I am hereby waiving the application of such sanctions, restrictions, and duties provided for in the Graham Act,"

He added that the legislation lets him “waive the application of any sanctions provision” covering foreign individuals, and that he had already acted on the certification requirement.

"I have submitted to the Congress a certification that the issuance of such a waiver at this time is in the national interests of the United States."

The Washington Examiner reported that the executive order indefinitely pauses the sweeping sanctions and tariffs in the Lindsey O. Graham Sanctioning Russia and Iran Act of 2026, the measure Trump had signed only the month before.

White House materials frame the step as routine execution of authority Congress chose to grant, not a repeal of the underlying statute.

The timing also tracks a separate energy arrangement. Last week Trump struck a deal allowing Russia to sell diesel into the U.S. and world market. Under the terms he described, Moscow could “immediately” begin supplying 300,000 tons of diesel, another 500,000 tons in November, then one million tons “immediately thereafter.”

Administration officials have tied the broader push to high fuel prices that climbed during the U.S. war in Iran and to a drive to ease costs for American drivers and shippers. Trump has defended the Russian diesel arrangement as an America First step for U.S. motorists facing those pressures.

Zelensky calls the diesel relief a betrayal

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky pushed back hard in a Wednesday interview with Piers Morgan. He said he felt “betrayed” by the diesel decision.

"It’s more complicated than just my emotions or just my feelings,"

Zelensky continued:

"Yes, it depends not on me. Our country has to survive."

His complaint landed as Kyiv continues to fight a grinding war and as Washington balances support for Ukraine against domestic price shocks. Trump has also moved to lock in limits on energy strikes in the Russia-Ukraine fight, another signal that fuel and infrastructure costs now sit at the center of his calculations.

Capitol Hill letter demands the license be pulled

Backlash was not limited to Kyiv. On Thursday, five Republican lawmakers joined Democratic colleagues in a letter to the Trump administration.

"We urge the Administration to revoke this license and not issue further general licenses that reopen Russian energy transactions and restore revenue to the Kremlin’s war chest,"

The signers cast the diesel permission as a direct boost to Moscow’s finances. Their letter did not erase the waiver authority Congress itself wrote into the Graham Act, and it did not block the national-interests certification Trump already filed.

The dispute lays bare a familiar split: lawmakers who want maximum economic pressure on Russia versus an administration that says American fuel markets and household budgets cannot be ignored while prices stay elevated.

Critics on the right open a second front

Some conservative voices went further than the Hill letter. National Review’s Andrew McCarthy argued that “Vladimir Putin’s regime is an enemy of the United States, and President Donald Trump is giving it aid and comfort, subordinating vital American interests to the Kremlin’s interests. It’s that simple.”

That charge treats any opening to Russian energy as strategic surrender. Trump’s order answers with a different priority list: statutory waiver power, a formal certification to Congress, and immediate diesel volumes meant to relieve tightness in global and U.S. fuel markets.

Readers can weigh both claims against the same record. The Graham Act became law last month with presidential signature. The diesel quantities and schedule came from the president’s own description of the deal. The Friday order then suspended the Act’s sanctions, restrictions, and duties before they took effect and notified Congress that the pause serves national interests.

No part of that sequence required inventing new powers. The statute anticipated presidential waivers. Trump used them.

Fuel costs and the Iran war sit behind the choice

S1 and the supporting coverage both place the decision inside a larger price problem. Fuel costs rose during the U.S. war in Iran. Global diesel was already tight. Allowing Russian barrels into the market was sold as a practical response for drivers, truckers, and farmers who pay those bills every week.

Opponents counter that any revenue flowing to Moscow undercuts the original purpose of the Graham package, raising the cost of Russia’s war against Ukraine. Zelensky’s “betrayed” line and the bipartisan Capitol Hill letter carry that argument in plain language.

Trump’s public posture on other fights has been equally blunt. He has warned that he could still target longtime political rivals when he believes the record justifies it, and he has shown the same willingness to break from party consensus when energy and security trade-offs collide.

Here the break is institutional as much as personal. Congress passed a tough sanctions bill and left the president an off-ramp. He took the off-ramp, put the reasons in writing, and moved diesel toward the market on a published schedule.

What the order does and does not do

The executive order does not repeal the Graham Act. It waives application of the sanctions, restrictions, and duties the Act provides, and it rests on a national-interests certification already delivered to Congress.

It also sits beside, rather than inside, the diesel license that lawmakers want revoked. The Thursday letter treats that license as the immediate problem and warns against any further general licenses that would reopen Russian energy sales. Trump’s Friday action addresses the broader sanctions package that had not yet taken effect.

Absolute calendar dates for “last month,” “last week,” Wednesday’s interview, and Thursday’s letter were not fixed beyond the Friday evening order and the Oct. 16 publication window. The tonnage schedule, 300,000 tons at once, 500,000 in November, one million tons right after, comes from the president’s account of the agreement.

Names of the five Republicans and their Democratic co-signers were not listed in the initial coverage. The full text of the certification and the complete license language likewise sat outside the early reports. What was public was enough to show the legal mechanism, the energy rationale, and the political collision that followed.

American families still buy diesel and gasoline at prices shaped by war, sanctions, and global supply. Congress wrote a sanctions bill that included a presidential waiver. Trump used that waiver, told Congress it was in the national interest, and opened a path for more fuel while the critics filed their letters.