Days before a government shutdown deadline, Donald Trump is raising the vague, if consequential, specter of a “100%” tariff aimed at Hollywood’s feature film development pipeline.
“Our movie making business has been stolen from the United States of America, by other Countries,” the President wrote on his Truth Social platform, adding a few digs at California Gov. Gavin Newsom before getting to the point: “I will be imposing a 100% Tariff on any and all movies that are made outside of the United States.”
If this sounds familiar, it was just months ago in May that Trump issued what sounded like a bombshell at the time: All movies that would be “made” outside the country would be subject to a tariff. At the time, viewed in the context of the President’s roll out of his tariffs on dozens of countries, it felt like an ominous move that would throw co-financing, co-production and development in to disarray.
Since that time, more context about what prompted the original tariffs missive — a Mar-a-Lago meeting with his Hollywood ambassador Jon Voight and his business partner Steven Paul, for one — has added more nuance to the narrative. Voight and Paul, for example, formally unveiled what they described as a Trump-friendly blueprint to the President as of May 5. That plan mentioned “federal tax incentives, significant changes to several tax codes, the establishment of co-production treaties with foreign countries, and infrastructure subsidies for theater owners, film and television production companies, and post-production companies.”
Notably the only mention of tariffs in Trump’s own Hollywood advisor’s plan was a line that read, “The proposal also includes a focus on job training, and tariffs in certain limited circumstances.”
More to come.
