Not 'how movies are made': Hollywood bewildered by new Trump announcement

05 May 2025, 12:50 by https://www.facebook.com/17108852506 · AlterNet

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Donald Trump makes a cameo appearance in Home Alone 2

Adam Lynch
May 05, 2025Frontpage news and politics

President Donald Trump’s proposal to extend his controversial tariffs to the U.S. film industry elicited puzzled looks and concerns from industry insiders, reports Time Magazine.

“The Movie Industry in America is DYING a very fast death,” Trump posted on Truth Social Sunday night. “Other Countries are offering all sorts of incentives to draw our filmmakers and studios away from the United States.”

In response, Trump announced he was “authorizing the Department of Commerce, and the United States Trade Representative,” to institute a 100% tariff on movies “coming into our Country that are produced in Foreign Lands.”

Reuters reports Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick quickly posted: "We're on it" on X, but industry professionals are unclear about how to institute such a thing. Unlike Trump’s global trade war on foreign goods for which the U.S. is a net-importer, foreign films are intellectual property and part of the global trade of services, for which the U.S. is actually a net-exporter.

“I know it’s not the U.S. government or the President’s job to understand how movies are made,” said entertainment consultant Kathryn Arnold, “but if you understand how complex and interconnected the global film market is—both on a production and a distribution level—it’s devastating and doesn’t make any sense.”

“It’s not black or white like that,” said Tom Nunan, a continuing lecturer at the School of Theater, Film and Television at University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA).

Critics say offering federal incentives for production in the U.S. would be more straightforward than trying to identify a film as “American” or “foreign” before penalizing it. As Trump referenced in his Sunday post, other governments, including China and Canada, have had great success offering credits and cash rebates to attract film production crews from major companies like Walt Disney, Netflix and Universal Pictures.

However, leaders in Australia and New Zealand were responding as early as Monday to Trump's tariff threat, saying they would advocate for their local industries. Some Marvel superhero movies have been filmed in Australia, and New Zealand’s famous landscape served as the location for "The Lord of the Rings" films, reports Reuters.

Read the full Time Magazine story here.