Trump announces 100% tariffs on movies made overseas

Looking to boost the production of Hollywood movies in the U.S., President Trump on Sunday announced a new 100% tariff applied on films produced overseas.

For more than two decades, major studios have shifted movie production to cheaper countries, including Canada, U.K., Bulgaria, New Zealand, Australia and other countries that offer generous tax benefits to build their local economies, luring films away from Hollywood.

The migration of high-paying jobs has become a critical issue for Los Angeles, which has seen a dramatic loss in film production and jobs in recent years.

The industry hasn’t fully recovered from shutdowns because of the COVID-19 pandemic, labor strikes and a retrenchment by legacy entertainment companies, many of which overspent to build streaming services to compete with Netflix.

“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,” Trump said late Sunday in a post on his Truth Social platform. “WE WANT MOVIES MADE IN AMERICA, AGAIN!”

Details of the plans, as well as whether the tariffs would be imposed on U.S.-based companies that shoot overseas, were not immediately available.

Movie executives on Sunday expressed bewilderment, wondering how a tariff would be imposed on a film, which, like a car, has components made in different countries while post-production often occurs in the U.S.

The Motion Picture Assn. wasn’t immediately available for comment.

Trump lamented how the “Movie Industry in America is DYING a very fast death.”

The president said countries that have offered “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,” Trump wrote. “This is a concerted effort by other Nations and, therefore, a National Security threat.”

The call for U.S. production comes after Trump tapped a trio of actors — Jon Voight, Sylvester Stallone and Mel Gibson — to be his “special ambassadors” to Hollywood. In January, Trump unveiled the initiative, calling Hollywood “a great but very troubled place.”

The president at the time said he and his ambassadors would help Hollywood spring “back — bigger, better, and stronger than ever before!”

But the envoys have kept a low profile since their appointment and many in Hollywood say they have not heard from them.

Late last month, Bloomberg News reported that Voight and his manager, Steven Paul, were preparing to present Trump with some ideas aimed at bolstering U.S. production, including offering some national incentives to help win back offshore business.

“It’s important that we compete with what’s going on around the world so there needs to be some sort of federal tax incentives,” Paul said in an interview with Bloomberg.