President Donald Trump responded to the continuing flight of movie production to other countries by floating a 100 percent tariff on films made outside the U.S. Many in Hollywood and elsewhere are not responding with gratitude but are, instead, lashing out at Trump’s proposal.
The film industry has been steadily fleeing Hollywood and California for more than a decade as locations in Georgia, Louisiana, New Mexico, and cities like New York and Chicago have been increasingly drawing productions their way. However, film producers have also been waving goodbye to the U.S. and taken up business in the U.K., Canada, Australia, and many spots in Europe.
California’s radical, left-wing, Democrat Gov., Gavin Newsom, has desperately tried to offer tax incentives to filmmakers, but the enticements are simply too little and too late for many producers. Film and TV production in the U.S. is already down 40 percent and that slide is continuing.
The result has been that many film industry workers have lost their jobs, and some have been forced to move elsewhere to try and keep their livelihoods intact.
Now, Trump has stepped in to offer a tariff incentive to keep film producers from fleeing the country.
The president took to his Truth Social account to speak to his alarm about the decline of the film industry in the U.S.
“The Movie Industry in America is DYING a very fast death,” he wrote on Sunday. “Other Countries are offering all sorts of incentives to draw our filmmakers and studios away from the United States. Hollywood, and many other areas within the U.S.A., are being devastated. This is a concerted effort by other Nations and, therefore, a National Security threat. It is, in addition to everything else, messaging and propaganda! Therefore, I am authorizing the Department of Commerce, and the United States Trade Representative, to immediately begin the process of instituting a 100% Tariff on any and all Movies coming into our Country that are produced in Foreign Lands. WE WANT MOVIES MADE IN AMERICA, AGAIN!”
Trump’s suggestion to help the film industry, though, is not sitting well with many in Hollywood and the global film industry, according to Variety, and many studio execs and film producers are blasting Trump over the tariff idea.
“This makes no sense,” one producer in the U.K. screamed, according to Variety. “It implies that a U.S. film is meant to shoot in the U.S. But the ‘Harry Potter’ films, ‘Lord Of The Rings,’ ‘Schindler’s List,’ ‘Mission Impossible,’ ‘Gladiator,’ ‘Aviator’ and so many more are U.S films that shot overseas for obvious reasons. Do these films have to shoot in the U.S. from now on? It’s an absurd announcement with no meaning nor understanding of storytelling or creative impulses.”
“If this goes the distance, it will decimate the industry. But you can’t just stop production,” another industry insider exclaimed.
Officials in France countered the president’s policy idea and said that film productions in their country are not even subject to tariffs in the first place because they are services, not products.
“Technically, films are services on which you can’t impose tariffs. It could end up in court and take months,” one French film industry insider told Variety, while another insisted that “We don’t sell goods, we sell a service, so I don’t see how it could be taxable… It’s difficult to know what we’re talking about at this stage, what it concerns. It’s still very vague and with Trump things can change every day.”
Still, most in the film industry are taking a wait-and-see attitude on Trump’s tariff suggestion. Many say there is no way to logically react until something actually happens and that Trump’s social media post is not something they can make plans over.
“We just have to wait and see what Trump’s next move is. It’s like in chess. We don’t know where this is going to go,” said Italian producer Marco Valerio Pugini.
Pugini also noted that some films simply can’t be made in the U.S.A. “But I think the U.S. studios will continue to shoot abroad when they want exotic locations. They aren’t going to start shooting James Bond in Detroit,” he joked.
Finally, another insider worried that heavy tariffs on filmmaking would lead to unwanted consequences.
“Ultimately, it’s just going to push the studios to make much heavier use of A.I.,” said former Abu Dhabi film chief Hans Fraikin. And others warned that such a tariff would speed global fim production to disassociate with the U.S. entirely.
Follow Warner Todd Huston on Facebook at: facebook.com/Warner.Todd.Huston, X at WTHuston, or Truth Social at @WarnerToddHuston.
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