The White House said that on 18 September the president signed H.R. 5334, the Lindsey O. Graham Sanctioning Russia and Iran Act of 2026, into law. The House had passed it two days earlier, 262 to 159, after the Senate cleared it 86 to 11 in August. Among the powers it carries is authority to put tariffs of as much as 100 percent on goods from the largest buyers of Russian oil and gas — a group that includes India, which the Indian government's national investment-promotion agency describes as handling approximately 90 percent of the world's diamond cutting and polishing.
No asking price on this site changed because of it. The law sets no rate by itself, and no new rate for India has been announced. What is worth separating, if you are shopping now, is the duty that is already being charged, the authority that was added last week, and the much smaller part of either that reaches the number printed on a retail listing.
What was signed, and what it actually does
Forbes India, in an explainer published on 21 September, describes the act as granting authority to impose duties of up to 100 percent ad valorem on countries importing Russian oil and gas, applying to all goods imported into the United States from a covered country rather than to energy alone. The five largest importers by volume are to be identified within 30 days of signing, the list is reassessed every 180 days, and the president may waive the measures under conditions the legislation specifies. India is the second-largest buyer of Russian crude after China, at 2.08 million barrels a day as of August 2026.
NBC News, reporting the House vote on 16 September, described the same provision as permitting tariffs of up to 100 percent on third countries buying significant volumes of Russian energy, with an exemption for nations taking significant steps to reduce their dependence.
The operative word in all of it is authority. The ceiling is written into the law; the rate is a decision, and as of today it has not been made.
Jewelers of America lobbied against that provision. National Jeweler reported on 17 September that JA president and chief executive David Bonaparte said the group supports sanctions on Russia but opposes the tariff provision "because if enacted it would raise prices" for consumers.
The rate in force today
National Jeweler reported on 17 September that diamond imports from India currently face a 10 percent tariff rate.
That figure dates from 24 July 2026. Diamond World, reporting the Gem & Jewellery Export Promotion Council's response on 29 July, described a Section 301 action that set India's additional rate at 10 percent across natural diamonds, colored gemstones, lab-grown stones and jewelry, with the competing cutting and trading centres — China, Hong Kong, Thailand, Türkiye, the UAE, Israel and Vietnam — at 12.5 percent, and jewelry carrying an existing duty of 5.5 to 6 percent on top of it. GJEPC chairman Kirit Bhansali said natural diamonds and colored gemstones should be exempted from the additional tariff.
Origin decides the rate, not the stone. National Jeweler, reporting from the JA fly-in in Washington on 18 September, wrote that rough and polished diamonds, gemstones and natural pearls coming from the EU are exempt from tariffs while diamonds from India, China and Canada face higher rates. Bonaparte's summary of the problem: "While some progress has been made in excluding diamonds, gemstones, and pearls from tariffs, these have come on a country-by-country basis." JA is asking for diamonds, gemstones and pearls to be excluded whatever their origin.
It is also a rate that has moved more than once in a single year. JCK reported on 9 February that cut and polished natural diamonds from India faced 25 percent as of 7 February, and that an interim US–India trade agreement was expected to take them to zero. What is in force seven months later is 10 percent. That record is the reason this piece carries no forecast.
Why a cutting-centre duty touches a champagne diamond at all
Champagne is a trade description. What admits a stone to this index is a GIA grading report that either carries a brown notation beside a K-to-Z color letter or grades the diamond on the colored-diamond scale with brown dominant — the two rules are in how we verify every stone, and what "faint brown" on a GIA report means covers the notation itself.
None of that is a customs category. The rates reported above apply to cut and polished natural diamonds as a class, and none of the reporting describes a carve-out by color, so a K stone with a Faint Brown notation enters the country on the same line as a G. A duty is charged ad valorem on the value declared at import rather than on a retail ticket, and how much of any change surfaces in a shop's price depends on where in the chain the stone was bought, when it was imported and what each retailer decides. We have no data on any of that, and neither does the listing you are reading.
What our index shows, on the 2026-09-21 data snapshot
2,701 unique verified natural brown diamonds, deduplicated by GIA report number, held across 5,028 retailer listings at 9 retailers. Median asking price $1,411, range $96 to $242,850. 2,378 stones are listed below their matched near-colorless benchmark, at a median discount of 46%. 1,198 stones are listed by more than one retailer. All asking prices on one snapshot, not records of completed sales.
What our data can answer, and what it cannot
Three limits are worth stating plainly.
We do not know where any indexed stone was cut. The record for a diamond here is its GIA report data and the retailer listings matched to it by report number; the country it was polished in is not part of that record, so we cannot say what share of the index would sit behind any particular rate.
We cannot measure pass-through. The index is rebuilt as a snapshot and today's numbers are today's; setting them against a figure from an earlier build would compare two different populations of stones rather than track a price.
And both sides of every card are US listings. The struck-through figure is a near-colorless G–H natural diamond matched to the stone on shape, on the same clarity grade, on cut tier and on a carat weight inside a window that never crosses a trade price threshold, taken at the lower quartile of those matched prices per carat — the method is on the prices page and in how our near-colorless price benchmark works. A duty that lands on cut and polished natural diamonds as a class sits behind the brown stone and the near-colorless comparator alike, which is a reason not to read a move in that discount as a tariff signal in either direction.
The gap that is already there
The spread a buyer can act on today needs no view on trade policy. Of the 2,701 stones on the 21 September snapshot, 1,198 are listed by more than one of the nine retailers indexed — the same physical diamond, matched by GIA report number, at more than one asking price. Why the same champagne diamond costs different amounts at different retailers sets out how that arises and how to compare two listings for one stone.
For what the tint is worth band by band, the champagne diamond price guide holds the carat tables; round is the largest shape pool here and one carat and over the band most buyers shop in.