The clock expired. The discretion remained.
Day 162. By the time Trump’s Russia deadline expired one year ago today, India had been assigned an additional 25 percent tariff. China had not. What arrived on deadline day was a new date: Trump would meet Vladimir Putin in Alaska one week later. The summit ended without a ceasefire.
Friday, the Senate passed a new Russia sanctions bill, 86–11. It would allow the president to impose tariffs on the five largest buyers of Russian energy, including India and China. It would not impose those tariffs itself. The House won’t return until the end of August.
That is what changed in a year: the threat moved from a presidential deadline to congressional legislation. What did not change is who decides whether the consequence arrives.
The clock expired. The discretion remained.
The Senate passed a package authorizing tariffs on the five largest buyers of Russian energy, including China and India, along with sanctions on Russian officials, financial institutions, energy projects and reflagged oil tankers. It now goes to the House when lawmakers return at the end of August. The bill includes national-interest waivers, so the vote creates presidential power rather than an automatic tariff.
| Senate: 86–11 | Targets: top-five energy buyers |
| Named: China and India | House: returns end of August |
| Waiver: national interest | Separate House bill: passed June |
Tehran and Muscat say they have agreed coordinates for a commercial corridor and call a framework close to final, while cautioning it would not by itself reopen Hormuz to all traffic. Chief negotiator Ghalibaf brushed off Trump’s on-again strike threats as “theater diplomacy on loop” as CENTCOM’s renewed blockade rerouted 51 vessels.
The S&P 500 closed Friday at 7,757.64, a record and its strongest week since April, after July payrolls unexpectedly shrank and futures cut the odds of a September Fed hike to about 44% from 57%. Next week’s CPI now holds the deciding vote.
Netanyahu said Israel did not agree to the US-led disarmament plan Hamas accepted last week and will not pull back “from our current lines” until Hamas is fully disarmed. The Board of Peace has since dropped its simultaneous-withdrawal language for a disarm-first sequence, leaving a 14-day drafting window and no settled order of moves.
A day after a marine push cleared Puget Sound, forecasters expect wildfire smoke to slide back into Western Washington and the Seattle metro through midweek, dragging air quality from healthy toward hazy. East of the Cascades, fires around Spokane have destroyed hundreds of structures and remain active.
Drew Rasmussen spun seven scoreless innings and Jonny DeLuca and Jonathan Aranda homered as Tampa Bay edged the Mariners 2–1 at T-Mobile Park on Friday. Julio Rodríguez’s ninth-inning solo shot was all Seattle managed. Two left in the set.
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