WASHINGTON — Congress voted on Thursday to strip Moscow of its preferential trade status and to ban the import of Russian energy into the United States, sending the legislation to penalize Russia’s economy over the invasion of Ukraine to President Biden’s desk.
The legislation would allow the United States to impose higher tariffs on Russian goods and cut off a significant revenue stream for President Vladimir V. Putin, though experts have said that the oil and gas ban would be largely symbolic. Russian energy represents a small fraction of American imports, and Moscow is already having trouble exporting its oil.
Both bills passed overwhelmingly and with bipartisan support. In the Senate on Thursday morning, each measure mustered a rare unanimous 100-to-0 vote, and when the House moved hours later to approve the bills, fewer than a dozen lawmakers opposed either of them. Mr. Biden is expected to sign them.
The swift succession of votes capped weeks of partisan deadlock that paralyzed legislative action on Ukraine. The House had passed similar legislation last month, but it languished as senators bickered over various provisions and demanded changes, especially to human rights language that Senator Rand Paul, Republican of Kentucky, deemed overly broad.
Leery of allowing the bills to hang in limbo as lawmakers prepared to leave Washington for a planned two-week recess, Senator Chuck Schumer, Democrat of New York and the majority leader, announced on Wednesday night that the Senate would pass them just hours before confirming Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson to the Supreme Court, setting up a mad dash of on-deadline legislating.
Lawmakers hailed the lopsided votes as sending an important, unified message as Russian soldiers continue a campaign of atrocities across Ukraine.
“No nation whose military is committing war crimes deserves free trade status with the United States,” Mr. Schumer said on Thursday. “No vile thug like Putin deserves to stand as an equal with the leaders of the free world. He is a menace and a pariah who has ensured that his place in history will be one of everlasting shame.”
The difficulty of passing legislation broadly supported by Republicans and Democrats in both chambers to punish Russia — and replicating efforts announced by the White House nearly a month ago — suggested a grim outlook for future attempts by lawmakers to pass any sweeping measures aimed at supporting Ukraine.
Senators passed a bill late Wednesday to resurrect the 1941 Lend-Lease Act, last used in World War II to aid allies fighting Germany, to lend military equipment to Ukraine. It was passed after 9 p.m. without warning or debate, using a mechanism that automatically approves the legislation unless a senator present on the floor objects, indicating that lawmakers were wary that one or more of their colleagues would move to thwart the bill’s passage.
The measures passed on Thursday were the first stand-alone bills intended to punish Moscow or aid Kyiv that Congress has sent to Mr. Biden’s desk in the more than 40 days since Russia’s invasion. The most significant bill Congress has passed to help Ukraine was the $13.6 billion package of military and humanitarian aid passed last month, which was tied to a must-pass federal spending bill.
The move by the United States to strip Russia of its preferential trade status — known as “permanent normal trade relations” — carries symbolic weight, but trade experts have said that it will have a limited economic effect compared with other sanctions that have been imposed. Revoking that status has a much larger effect for the European Union, Russia’s largest trading partner.
In the House, three Republican lawmakers — Representatives Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia, Matt Gaetz of Florida and Thomas Massie of Kentucky — opposed the trade bill. Nine lawmakers, both Republicans and Democrats, opposed the legislation targeting Russian energy products.
