Two instruments, two points of collection
The Senate passed the bill by 86 to 11. The text opens the way to 100 per cent tariffs on countries importing Russian oil and gas, and targets the clandestine maritime networks used to get around the embargo. These two arms address different parties: one looks at a buyer state's imports, the other at the companies doing the carrying.[1]
On the same day the European Union approved measures against five people linked to Russia's military-industrial complex. A listing binds inside the jurisdiction that issues it from the moment it is adopted: banks, insurers and companies see the name and stop the transaction.[2]
A tariff is collected somewhere else. A duty applied to a country that buys Russian oil is collected by US customs at the point where that country's goods enter the United States. The payment therefore comes out of that state's access to the US market, rather than out of the relationship between the buyer state and its seller. What the buyer weighs is therefore the size of its own export basket.[1], [2]
The bill is not law yet
The text now goes to the House of Representatives and the vote is scheduled no earlier than early September because of the recess. In that gap there is not a single covered transaction: no duty to collect and no obligation to comply with. When Jim Risch, the ranking member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, argued the legislation could finally bring Russia to the negotiating table, the effect he described still depends on the second chamber's calendar.[1]
Even so, a buyer may already have to price a duty whose scope is not settled; ignoring an announced risk while committing to long-term purchases is expensive. The reverse is equally reasonable: because a text that has not cleared the second chamber can still narrow, waiting may be the rational choice. Which behaviour prevails will show in the direction of the purchase contracts signed before September.[1]