Trump’s latest tariff agenda: Make movies crap again

Each day of Donald Trump’s second presidential administration has felt like the scene in “A Christmas Story,” where Ralphie speeds to the bathroom to use his “Little Orphan Annie” decoder ring to spell out a gravely important, super-secret message. After some considerable suspense, Ralphie, of course, finds out that he’s been duped by the hand of Big Advertising. Despite feeling like life-or-death in the moment, the message piped to him over the airwaves is ultimately meaningless bull. That’s precisely what it’s like to wake up, check your phone and find out that Trump has once again spouted off some new, seemingly horrific policy that, in reality, has zero actionable planning to enforce it.

One of the latest and most confounding of Trump’s plans is an addendum to his crippling tariffs. As part of ongoing trade wars, the Trump administration placed a 10% baseline tariff on all imports into the United States, with China, Mexico and Canada hit with additional tariffs, all of which have fluctuated since Trump postponed his initial proposal. These levies on goods and materials are obnoxious and have the consumer paying the price, but at least they had an identifiable (if petty) reason for existing.

Trump’s newest proposed tariff, however, is a real head-scratcher. The president took to his Truth Social platform last week to scream into the void that the “movie industry in America is dying a very fast death” due to international tax credits encouraging filmmakers and production companies to shoot their movies overseas. “This is a concerted effort by other nations, and, therefore, a National Security threat,” Trump wrote. He sees international film production as a form of propaganda, saying, “WE WANT MOVIES MADE IN AMERICA, AGAIN!” To stimulate that dying industry, the president said he’d immediately begin the process of instituting a 100% tariff on “any and all movies coming into our country that are produced on foreign lands.”

Both Hollywood executives and everyday, average film lovers were sent into a spiral. How would a 100% tariff on something like a film even work, and how would it affect film production? Would the tariff trickle down to the moviegoer’s ticket price, like tolls placed on goods such as clothing coming into the United States from international distributors? As is the case with most of his haphazard policy-making, even Trump himself doesn’t have a clear answer to these questions. It turns out that this proposed tariff has a good bit of legal and practical red tape holding it back. But if Trump can successfully enact the 100% film tariff in the coming months, he stands to cripple the American film industry much faster and far more severely than any international production ever could. The tariff isn’t just an attempt to curb non-domestic film production, it’s a deceptive way to hinder filmmaking that doesn’t align with his agenda.

But first: deep breath. What the president is proposing in his erratically capitalized rant isn’t something that can be immediately enacted like an executive order, at least in most cases. Historically, Congress had the power to oversee and implement tariffs. Over the decades, some of that power was diverted to the president, especially in trade cases designated threats to national security. That would explain why Trump specifically called internationally produced films an affront to our domestic security, despite a total lack of sound reasoning or defense to that point. However, quick action is often legally untested and could conceivably result in a lawsuit from within the film industry to make the 100% tariff a judicial matter, meaning it would be out of Trump’s control.

That might explain why, when pressed about his film tariff, Trump dodged a firm answer about what the fees were specifically intended to do and how they would be enforced. “Other nations have been stealing the movie-making capabilities from the United States,” he yelled to CNN as an Air Force One chopper revved behind him. “Hollywood is being destroyed. Now, you have a grossly incompetent governor [Gavin Newsom] who allowed that to happen. So I’m not just blaming other nations . . . If they’re not willing to make a movie inside the United States, then we should have a tariff on movies that come in. And not only that, governments are actually giving big money. They’re supporting them financially. That’s sort of a threat to our country in a sense.”

A man walks past movie posters at an AMC Theater in Montebello, California, on May 5, 2025. (FREDERIC J. BROWN/AFP via Getty Images)Squeezed by reporters, Trump said that he would do research and personally ask Hollywood studios if they agree to his tariff proposal. “I want to make sure that they’re happy with it, because we’re all about jobs,” Trump told reporters. What looked like it might spell trouble for an already-flailing industry quickly turned out to be little more than big talk, at least for now. The World Trade Organization has a moratorium on digital goods until 2026, and films would presumably fall into that category. Whether Trump could use the law citing reasons of national security to implement a tariff on films is another question entirely, given that the full text of that specific written law excludes films, publications and artwork.

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Now that some of the fear-mongering dust has settled, Trump’s likelier intentions are in clearer view. The president and his designated team of Hollywood “special ambassadors” Jon Voight, Mel Gibson and Sylvester Stallone are seeking ways to bolster the American film industry after a major and swift economic downturn over the first half of the decade. COVID lockdowns at the top of the 2020s buckled the film industry and sent more domestic productions overseas. Recent tentpole blockbusters like “Wicked” and “Deadpool & Wolverine” were shot internationally, and many major American studios have production hubs in cities like London and Vancouver. Countries outside the United States have found that introducing a wealth of production incentives for American films can attract filmmakers looking to cut costs while bolstering the local film and television production sectors. Put simply, international production benefits other countries as much as it benefits American filmmakers, and figures show that the number of incentivized productions overseas is way up. It’s not exactly inconceivable that Trump would want to keep productions local if he is, as he says, “all about jobs.”

But this isn’t just about jobs, it’s about the right kinds of jobs — and therefore, the right kinds of films. Trump has had a bee in his incontinence diapers ever since Bong Joon-ho’s “Parasite” won the Oscar for best picture in 2020. Trump criticized the win at the time, saying, “What the hell was that all about? We’ve got enough problems with South Korea with trade, on top of it they give it the best movie of the year? Let’s get ‘Gone with the Wind’ back, please.” Notably, Trump cited international trade while he spoke about “Parasite,” as both media and trade have been converging objects of the president’s skewed, sickening affection for some time.

Now, Trump is grasping at straws to do what he can to hinder the current state of American filmmaking. Trump and his special Hollywood ambassadors could develop a national tax incentive program of their own to encourage economic stimulus in the domestic filmmaking sector, but that seems like a less likely option than the president’s continued focus on what he already sees as an assault on American security.

If Trump successfully implements his proposed 100% tariff, it would effectively bludgeon the international sales market for small and mid-budget titles at festivals like Cannes, where the industry is convening this week. If these movies can’t sell to American distributors due to a massive tariff, an equally colossal section of the potential money-spending audience is removed from the equation. In that case, even internationally shot, American-made movies without a large enough budget to recoup the cost of a tariff would not get made at all. We’d quickly see the American film industry become completely reliant on big-budget blockbusters. In a time when small-to-mid-budget films are already struggling, that incredibly important section of filmmaking — the kind that typically produces the most interesting, intriguing, important art — would be the first to go.

But the proposed tariff isn’t just a boneheaded move that would destroy small-budget filmmaking, it’s a covert way for Trump to keep undermining and disabling state funding for progressive noncommercial filmmaking and art. Early in May, the Trump administration terminated dozens of publicly funded arts grants that were due to be paid out, citing that the recipients “did not align” with the president's priorities. Many fear the National Endowment for the Arts, the federal agency that funds and supports independent artists and filmmakers, could be next.

Given that Trump is going after PBS, which has a long history of airing “controversial” and “blasphemous” NEA-sponsored art like Marlon Riggs’ 1989 video essay “Tongues Untied,” the pipeline is easy to follow. Those trying to make culturally significant, noncommercial art with public grants are having their funding yanked away in favor of work that “celebrates America’s greatness.” They have no chance to become commercial filmmakers like those awarded public grants in other countries. And with no domestic incentive for international filmmakers to produce work in the United States, no publicly funded grants for up-and-coming artists, and a potential tariff lopping off internationally produced American films, the artistic side of filmmaking dies. All that’s left would be shoddy, state-sponsored movies promoting conservative values and monotonous, crash-bang-boom blockbusters. I don’t know about you, but I’d say that’s a far more bleak state of filmmaking than some American productions scoring a tax break for filming in Italy. Trump’s latest move might not have the fate of the planet hanging in the balance — as Ralphie briefly thought in “A Christmas Story” — but the fate of movie-making very well might.