(REUTERS) — New sanctions on Russia which U.S. President Donald Trump has signed into law are tantamount to a “full-scale trade war”, Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev said on Wednesday.

Medvedev also said in a Facebook post that the sanctions showed the Trump administration was utterly powerless.

“The hope that our relations with the new American administration would improve is finished,” he wrote. </s> Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev says Donald Trump’s signing legislation imposing new sanctions on Russia is declaration of a full-fledged trade war.

He says the Trump administration has demonstrated complete impotence, in the most humiliating manner, by transferring executive powers to congress.

President Trump had earlier expressed his own doubts about the legislation saying the bill remains seriously flawed because it encroaches on the executive branch’s authority to negotiate.

 =sot= </s> WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. President Donald Trump grudgingly signed into law new sanctions against Russia on Wednesday, a move Moscow said amounted to a full-scale trade war and an end to hopes for better ties with the Trump administration.

Congress overwhelmingly approved the legislation last week, passing a measure that conflicts with the Republican president’s desire to improve relations with Moscow.

Trump signed the bill behind closed doors, without the fanfare that has customarily accompanied his signing of executive orders. He criticized the measure as infringing on his powers to shape foreign policy, and said he could make “far better deals” with governments than Congress can.

Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev called the sanctions tantamount to a “full-scale trade war,” adding in a Facebook post that they showed the Trump administration had demonstrated “utter powerlessness.”

“The hope that our relations with the new American administration would improve is finished,” he wrote.

Trump’s litany of concerns about the sanctions, which also affect Iran and North Korea, raised the question of how vigorously Trump will implement them regarding Russia.

“While I favor tough measures to punish and deter aggressive and destabilizing behavior by Iran, North Korea, and Russia, this legislation is significantly flawed,” Trump said in a message to lawmakers known as a signing statement. He also issued a statement for the press about the bill.

The new law allows Congress, which passed the measure to punish Russia over interference in the 2016 U.S. presidential election and the annexation of Ukraine’s Crimea, to halt any effort by Trump to ease sanctions on Russia.

His hands were tied after the Republican-controlled Congress approved the legislation by such a large margin last week that any presidential veto of the bill would have been overridden.

The legislation provoked countermeasures by Russian President Vladimir Putin, who said on Sunday that the U.S. diplomatic mission in Russia must reduce its staff by 755 people. Russia is also seizing two properties near Moscow used by American diplomats.

Trump has repeatedly said he wants to improve relations with Russia. That desire has been stymied by U.S. intelligence agencies’ findings that Russia interfered to help the Republican against Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton.

U.S. congressional panels and a special counsel are investigating. Moscow denies any meddling and Trump denies any collusion by his campaign.

MIXED SIGNALS ON RUSSIA

Republican House of Representatives Speaker Paul Ryan welcomed the signing, saying it would send “a powerful message to our adversaries that they will be held accountable.”

In his statements on the sanctions law, Trump complained about what he said was congressional infringement on the president’s constitutional power to set foreign policy, saying the law reflected congressional “preferences” rather than a legal mandate.

“It is flagging those areas where the administration sees itself as having wiggle room to underenforce the law by citing claimed constitutional concerns,” said Harold Koh, a Yale Law School professor who was a legal adviser to the State Department during the Obama administration.

FILE PHOTO: Russia's President Vladimir Putin talks to U.S. President Donald Trump during their bilateral meeting at the G20 summit in Hamburg, Germany July 7, 2017. REUTERS/Carlos Barria

The House’s top Democrat, Nancy Pelosi, said the signing statement “raises serious questions about whether his administration intends to follow the law.”

Trump said he was elected partly because of his successes in business, adding, “As President, I can make far better deals with foreign countries than Congress.”

Trump’s signing statement was the latest in a series of mixed signals from the administration on Russia.

“I feel like there’s several policies being implemented at once, and they’re not very compatible with one another. This is one more,” said Olga Oliker, a Russia expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a think tank based in Washington.

Vice President Mike Pence, touring Baltic countries adjacent to Russia, has followed a hawkish line. Pence said Trump’s signing of the legislation would show that Congress and the president were “speaking with a unified voice” on Russia.

However, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, like Trump, has been critical of the legislation.

“The action by the Congress to put these sanctions in place and the way they did, neither the president nor I were very happy about that,” Tillerson said on Tuesday.

TARGETING THE ENERGY SECTOR

The sanctions will affect a range of Russian industries and might further hurt Russia’s economy, already weakened by 2014 sanctions imposed after the annexation of Crimea.

Slideshow (3 Images)

Besides angering Moscow, the legislation has upset the European Union, which has said the new sanctions might affect its energy security and prompt it to retaliate if needed.

Several provisions of the law target the Russian energy sector, with new limits on U.S. investment in Russian companies. American companies also would be barred from participating in energy exploration projects where Russian firms have a stake of 33 percent or higher.

The legislation includes sanctions on foreign companies investing in or helping Russian energy exploration, although the president could waive those sanctions.

It would give the Trump administration the option of imposing sanctions on companies helping develop Russian export pipelines, such as the Nord Stream 2 pipeline carrying natural gas to Europe, in which German companies are involved. </s> Moscow: Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev said the new sanctions imposed by the US are tantamount to declaring a "full-scale trade war" against Moscow and the administration demonstrated complete impotence in the most humiliating manner, the media reported.

Writing on his Facebook page on Wednesday, Medvedev said the sanctions package "ends hopes for improving our relations with the new US administration", reports the BBC.

"The sanctions regime has been codified and will remain in effect for decades unless a miracle happens."

The White House announced the signing of the Countering America`s Adversaries Through Sanctions Act at around 11 am on Wednesday, saying the legislation includes "a number of clearly unconstitutional provisions" that "purport to displace the President`s exclusive constitutional authority to recognize foreign governments, including their territorial bounds", CNN reported.

Medvedev added that he thought Trump was an "incompetent player (who) must be eliminated".

The law aims to punish Russia for its alleged meddling in the 2016 US elections, its actions in Ukraine and the annexation of the Crimean peninsula in 2014.

Moscow — which denies interfering in the US presidential election — had already retaliated last week when Congress passed the bill, by expelling 755 people from the US embassy and consulates in Russia, the BBC reported.

The legislation also imposes sanctions on Iran and North Korea.

Iran said the new sanctions violated the nuclear deal and it would respond in an "appropriate and proportional" manner, according to Isna news agency.

North Korea has so far made no public comments on the US move.

Several European nations, including Germany, are fearful of the economic consequences and European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker has warned of "unintended unilateral effects that impact the European Union`s energy security interests". </s> MOSCOW - Russian President Vladimir Putin on Monday signed into law counter-sanctions legislation that was drawn up by lawmakers in response to U.S. sanctions imposed on Russia in April.



The legislation gives the president, among other things, the power to sever ties with unfriendly countries, and to ban trade of goods with those countries. </s> U.S. President Trump awards the Medal of Honor to James McCloughan during a ceremony at the White House in Washington Thomson Reuters President Donald Trump appeared to echo Kremlin talking points Thursday morning when he tweeted that Congress was to blame for the US relationship with Russia being at an "all-time & very dangerous low."

"Our relationship with Russia is at an all-time & very dangerous low," he said. "You can thank Congress, the same people that can't even give us HCare!"

Democratic Sen. Mark Warner, the vice chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, responded quickly.

"Or you could thank Russian dictator Putin, who hacked US election, undermines Western alliances, invaded Ukraine & annexed Crimea," he tweeted.

Trump's tweet came a day after Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev took to Twitter to denounce the veto-proof sanctions bill that Trump was essentially handcuffed into signing on Wednesday, appearing to appeal to the president's ego by calling his administration weak and pinning the blame on Congress.

"The Trump administration has shown its total weakness by handing over executive power to Congress in the most humiliating way," Medvedev tweeted on Wednesday.

Jeremy Bash, the former chief of staff at the Defense Department and the CIA, predicted earlier this week that Trump's "bromance" with Russian President Vladimir Putin would continue even if Trump signed the sanctions bill, because Putin would know Trump was backed into a corner by Congress.

Medvedev seemed to acknowledge that on Wednesday, writing that while Trump "is not happy about the sanctions...he could not but sign the bill."

"The US establishment fully outwitted Trump," he said.

Trump is known for "punching back" when he feels slighted. He slammed China last weekend, for instance, for its reluctance to rein in North Korea. He criticized London Mayor Sadiq Khan hours after a deadly terror attack rocked the city in June. Last year, during the presidential campaign, he attacked the Gold Star parents of slain Army Cpt. Humayun Khan after they spoke out against him at the 2016 Democratic National Convention.

As of Thursday, however, Trump still had not responded to Putin's demand that 755 diplomatic workers, many of them American, be cut from the US Embassy in Moscow and from US diplomatic missions in St. Petersburg, Ekaterinburg, and Vladivostok.

The cuts would be the steepest in nearly 100 years and would go much further than President Barack Obama's decision to expel 35 Russian diplomats from the US as punishment for Russia's election interference.

Ned Price, a former CIA analyst who served as a National Security Council spokesperson and Special Assistant to President Barack Obama, called Trump's tweet on Thursday "inexplicable" and said it "does nothing more than reiterate what Moscow already knows: namely that Russia has a stalwart friend in the form of the President of the United States."

But Price noted that it was not the first time Trump "has parroted Kremlin talking points."

"He did it consistently during the campaign—actually directing his supporters to Moscow's propaganda—and has continued to do so as President," Price said on Thursday. "Moscow may well know why President Trump is so loyal, but the American people continue to be baffled — and rightly so."

Trump's attacks on Congress, meanwhile, mark a bizarre turning point in the drama unfolding between the White House and the GOP-controlled House and Senate.

That battle has escalated in recent weeks amid the Senate's failure to repeal and replace Obamacare, and Trump has criticized Republicans for failing to protect him amid the intelligence committees' probes into his campaign's contacts with Russia during the election.

"As the phony Russian Witch Hunt continues, two groups are laughing at this excuse for a lost election taking hold, Democrats and Russians!" Trump tweeted late last month. "It's very sad that Republicans, even some that were carried over the line on my back, do very little to protect their President."

A provision in the new sanctions bill requiring Trump to get congressional approval before altering or lifting sanctions on Russia has also been a major point of contention between the White House and Congress.

Trump, who has lingering doubts that Russia interfered in the 2016 election, said shortly after signing the bill into law on Wednesday that "America will not tolerate interference in our democratic process" and denounced "Russian subversion and destabilization."

But he called the legislation "seriously flawed," claiming that it "improperly encroaches on executive power, disadvantages American companies, and hurts the interests of our European allies." </s> U.S. President Donald Trump has signed legislation imposing new sanctions on Russia into law after

last week’s vote by congress for sanctions to punish the Russian

government over interference in the 2016 Presidential Election, annexation of Ukraine’s Crimea and other perceived violations of international norms.

Trump, who has made clear he wants to improve relations with Russia, has accepted the new congressional sanctions, which also includes Iran and North Korea.

The bill had enough support in Congress to override a presidential veto.

Donald Trump and two Republican senators, Tom Cotton of Arkansas and David Perdue of Georgia, have unveiled a plan to change the rules for legal immigrants.

The new proposal suggests a cut in legal immigration by 50 percent over 10 years by reducing the kinds of relatives immigrants can bring into the country.

The White House believes the changes proposed by the senators would raise wages FOREIGN

 and create jobs. </s> MOSCOW, June 4 (Reuters) - Russian President Vladimir Putin on Monday signed into law counter-sanctions legislation that was drawn up by lawmakers in response to U.S. sanctions imposed on Russia in April.

The legislation gives the president, among other things, the power to sever ties with unfriendly countries, and to ban trade of goods with those countries. (Reporting by Andrey Ostroukh Writing by Tom Balmforth; Editing by Toby Chopra) </s> The Trump administration announced Thursday it is enacting new sanctions on Russia for its election meddling, a month-and-a-half after missing a congressionally mandated deadline.

The new punishments include sanctions on the Internet Research Agency, a Russian troll farm that produced divisive political posts on American social media platforms during the 2016 presidential election. Yevgeniy Viktorovich Prigozhin, a financial backer to the Internet Research Agency with deep ties to Russian President Vladimir Putin, is also included.

Known as “Putin’s chef,” Prigozhin was indicted by special counsel Robert Mueller earlier this year for his involvement with the Russian troll farm.

In total, the administration applied new sanctions on five entities and 19 individuals on Thursday, including Russians who posed as Americans and posted content online as part of the IRA’s attempts to sow discord ahead of the presidential contest.

The sanctions were applied through executive power as well as through the Countering America’s Adversaries Through Sanctions Act, which Congress initially passed this summer hoping to pressure Trump into punishing Russia for its election interference.

Trump signed the bill reluctantly in August, claiming it impinged upon his executive powers and could dampen his attempts to improve ties with Moscow.

The measure imposed an October deadline on the administration to produce lists of individuals and entities that could be subject to potential sanctions, and a January deadline to impose them. The law required the administration to identify entities that conduct significant business with the Russian defense and intelligence sectors.

The administration missed both by several weeks, claiming necessary work was underway at the State and Treasury Departments to complete the lists.

The delay was seen as sign of Trump’s unwillingness to punish Russia for its meddling, which he has downplayed in the past. Members of Congress expressed frustration that their law, which passed almost unanimously, wasn’t being enacted.

On Thursday, administration officials insisted the new measures weren’t the end of their efforts to punish Russia.

“By no means will this constitute the end to our ongoing campaign to instruct Mr. Putin to change his behavior,” a senior administration official told reporters.
President of the United States Donald Trump signs the Countering America's Adversaries Through Sanctions Act. Prime Minister of Russia Dmitry Medvedev calls it a "trade war".