A BIPARTISAN group of US Senators unveiled a bill that seeks to impose 100 pc tariffs on 5 countries, including India and China, for purchasing oil from Russia. The bill, brokered by late Republican Senator Lindsey Graham, exempts 15 European nations that buy gas from Russia from the tariffs, arguing that the purchases amount to a fraction of their total requirement and the countries in question were taking steps to reduce dependence on Moscow. Other countries that will be hit by the tariffs are Slovakia, Hungary, Azerbaijan.

 

“It’s been referred to as a tariffs bill, but actually it imposes full blocking sanctions on wide swaths of the Russian economy, including its energy industry, financial industry, defence industrial base, oligarchs, business people, and Vladimir Putin himself,” Richard Blumenthal, a Democratic Senator fromConnecticut, told reporters. “It imposes tariffs that are targeted: narrowly limited to the five major purchasers up to 100 per cent with waiver authority that is narrowly tailored and constricted. And those five major purchasers, right now, of oil are China, India, Slovakia, Hungary, Azerbaijan,” Blumenthal said. If the bill passes, it would be the first time that the Congress has explicitly authorised the use of tariffs as a geopolitical weapon with the goal of punishing countries financing another nation’s war effort.