President Donald Trump opens new Salvo in the tariff war against films made outside the United States
Trump said in a post on his Truth Social Platform Sunday night that he has authorized the Department of Commerce and the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative to shoot 100% tariffs, “for all any movies made on foreign lands and all movies in all movies.”
“The film industry in the United States is dying,” he wrote. “Other countries are offering all kinds of motivations to attract film producers and studios away from the United States. “It is a unanimous effort by other countries, and therefore, it is a national security threat. It is everything else, among all other things, messaging and publicity!”
It is not clear how any such international production tariffs are implemented. Large and small movies are common in the United States and other countries including production. Large budget movies, such as the upcoming “Mission: Imposs-Imboss-Final Estimates”, are shot around the world.
Over the years, incentive programs have affected film shooting, increasingly rolling out film production in California and other countries and countries with favorable tax incentives, such as Canada and the United Kingdom.
However, Trump’s tariffs are designed to guide consumers towards U.S. products. In cinemas, American-made films overwhelmingly occupy the domestic market.
China has improved domestic film production and eventually achieved a total revenue of more than $2 billion in this year's animated blockbuster “NE ZHA 2”. But even so, its sales came almost entirely from mainland China. In North America, it made only $20.9 million.
In New Zealand, in recent years, a continuous stream of governments have provided kickbacks and incentives there to attract Hollywood movies to the country, which has brought billions of dollars in tourism revenues powered by the Lord of the Rings and the Hobbit films that feature the country’s pristine and scenic landscapes. Recently, the sensational “Minecraft” film was shot entirely in New Zealand, with the 2023 American production company offering the country $1.3 billion in New Zealand dollars ($777 million) in exchange for 200 million New Zealanders in New Zealand.
New Zealand Prime Minister Christopher Luxon said he is waiting for more details of Trump's measures before commenting on them, but will continue to market to film producers abroad, including Bollywood in India. “We have an absolutely world-class industry,” he said. “This is the best place to make movies in the world, the time.”
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The Film Association, which represents major U.S. film studios and streaming services, did not immediately respond to Sunday night’s news.
MPA data shows that Hollywood exports dominate. According to MPA, U.S. films generated $22.6 billion in exports and $15.3 billion in trade surplus in 2023.
Republican Trump made a good attitude to his “tariff figure” label a few years ago, imposing new taxes on goods made in countries around the world. These include a 145% tariff on Chinese goods, as well as benchmark tariffs for other countries, and even higher taxes.
Trump's unilateral tariffs have had a huge impact on business flows, posing political risks and promoting the market in different directions. Tariffs on automobiles, steel and aluminum, including imports, including medicines, will be subject to new tariffs in the coming weeks.
Trump has long expressed concern about filmmaking.
Shortly before taking office, he announced that he had hired actors Mel Gibson, Jon Voight and Sylvester Stallone as Hollywood's “special ambassadors” to bring it back to “Back – bigger, bigger, better, stronger than ever!”
In recent years, American film and television production has been hampered, suffering setbacks from the 1923 competitive rush, the Hollywood Guild strike, and the recent wildfires in the Los Angeles area. Overall U.S. production fell 26% last year compared with 2021, according to data tracking production ProdPro.
According to the Hollywood Reporter, the group's annual executive survey asked about the preferred location for shooting, but the Hollywood Reporter in the United States said there was no top five locations found in the United States. Toronto, the United Kingdom, Vancouver, Central Europe and Australia ranked first, California ranked sixth, Georgia ranked seventh, New Jersey ranked eighth and New York.
This problem is particularly serious in California. In the Greater Los Angeles area, production fell 5.6% last year from 2023, second only to 2020 during the coronavirus pandemic, according to Filmla. Last time, in October, Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom proposed to expand California's movie and TV tax credit program to $750 million a year, up from $330 million.
Other U.S. cities such as Atlanta, New York, Chicago and San Francisco have also used active tax benefits to attract film and television productions. These programs can take the form of cash grants, such as tax credits provided by Texas or Georgia and New Mexico.
“Other countries have been stealing American filmmaking capabilities,” Trump told reporters Sunday night at the White House after returning from a weekend in Florida. “If they are unwilling to make movies in the United States, we should impose tariffs on movies in the United States.”
–Associated Press writers Gary Field in Washington and Charlotte Graham-McLay of Wellington, New Zealand contributed to the report in Washington.
