Senate Voting to Give Trump a Tariff Nuke
A bill supposedly aimed at Russia is really an unprecedented new tariff power grab—yet prominent Democrats are backing it.
[Update (August 7, 2026, 2:05 p.m. EDT): The bill discussed in this newsletter passed the Senate 86–11 on Friday afternoon. Efforts to strip the tariff powers from the legislation (led by Sens. Ron Wyden and Rand Paul) failed. The bill now goes to the House.]
DONALD TRUMP HAS SPENT the past year and a half bending every obscure trade law until it snapped, alienating global allies and jacking up costs for Americans. Democrats have heaped scorn on him for this, and Republicans have expressed their own displeasure via indirect or anonymous grumbling to the press. Yet now, lawmakers from both parties are poised to give the president even more tariff power.
And not just any tariff power. It’s potentially the nuclear bomb of tariff power.
A new, bipartisan bill could allow Trump to drop 100 percent tariffs on virtually any country he likes, for as long as he likes, and with pretty much bulletproof legal authority to do so; which means even the Supreme Court couldn’t bail out Congress (or the rest of us) next time.
This is all happening through the Lindsey O. Graham Sanctioning Russia Act, which is rapidly moving through Congress with broad bipartisan support. It is expected to clear the Senate, where it has 62 cosponsors (including 21 Democrats), as soon as today.
As the name implies, the bill is intended to honor the legacy of the late South Carolina Republican and to punish Russia via sanctions.
In reality,
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