Trump wants to apply 500 % duties on countries trading with Russia, but tolerates sanctions from Hungary
2025-06-29 19:19, act. 2025-06-29 20:57
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2025-06-29 19:19
update
2025-06-29 20:57
Republican Senator Lindsey Graham said on Sunday on ABC News that President Donald Trump would like to “move with the law” regarding sanctions against Russia and its trading partners.
Graham, who, together with the Democrat Senator Richard Blimenthale, is the author of the Act on new sanctions for Russia, emphasized that, as part of this solution, countries, buying goods from Russia and notaging Ukraine, will be covered by 500 % duties on products exported by them to the United States.
Earlier, the senator announced that he would change the provisions of the Act to enable exceptions to penalties for countries providing help from Ukraine, which would exclude European countries still buying Russian oil and gas from his duties.
“India and China buy 70 percent of Putin's oil, maintaining the Russian war machine” – noted the senator. The act will allow Trump to impose duties on China and India, but also other countries to stop supporting the Russian war and make Russia proceed to talks – emphasized the politician.
“Yesterday, when we played golf, for the first time the president told me: it's time to start with your act,” Graham said.
“So we will give President Trump a tool that is not today. After the July break we will vote the act” – he added. According to him, it is possible that Trump will sign it. At the same time, he noted that the president would decide whether and how to use it.
On June 18, the Semaphore portal said that the American Senate would deal with the Act on new sanctions for Russia and its trading partners at the earliest in July. The delay was associated with the situation in the Middle East and work on the budget act. At that time, the website wrote that the Senate had not yet received green light on sanctions against Russia from President Trump.
The congressmen of both parties in both chambers of the US Congress for a long time are pressing sanctions. The project obliges administration to impose sanctions on entities in the energy and banking sector of Russia, as well as duties of 500 percent. For goods from countries consciously buying oil and other raw materials from Russia.
In the first half of June, “Wall Street Journal” wrote that Trump pressed Graham to alleviate the wording of his bill. According to the journal, the president was afraid that sanctions would harm a reset of bilateral relations.
Hungary: Trump abolished the sanctions imposed by Biden on our joint investment with Russia
The United States has lifted sanctions related to the expansion of the PAKS nuclear power plant in Hungary, imposed by the previous President Joe Biden – said Hungarian Foreign Minister Peter Szijjarto on Sunday.
The Bloomberg agency, citing the statement of Szijjarto, noticed that there is no confirmation from the USA that any sanctions in this matter would be abolished.
The PAKS-2 project includes the construction of two new energy blocks, for which Russia granted Hungary to a loan of 80 percent. project costs. Budapest must pay off the loan within 21 years. The Russian state corporation of Rosatom participates in the PAKS-2 project. Settlements between Russia and Hungary took place via Gazprombank, on which the United States imposed sanctions in 2024 after Russia's attack on Ukraine, which suspended the investment.
Restrictions on the expansion of the nuclear power plant were imposed by the Biden administration, “said Szijjarto, adding that they were aimed at” undermining the long -term security of energy supply in Hungary “by making” continuation of construction practically impossible “.
According to the minister, the situation changed when in January in Washington appeared the president who considers Hungary as a friend and therefore the restrictions were abolished. The production of the main equipment needed at the PAKS-2 nuclear power plant continues in Russia and France. Now construction can receive a new impulse – he emphasized. (PAP)
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From Washington Natalia Dziurdzińska (PAP)
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