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Donald Trump wants to make Hollywood great again. But left to his own devices he might just make it worse. The US president directed his team last weekend to begin exploring a 100 per cent tariff on all films produced abroad, claiming that the American movie industry is “dying”. That is a showman’s take. But the sector is indeed under pressure. Between 2021 and 2024, film and TV production spending in the US fell 28 per cent. A host of recent major Hollywood films — from Avatar in 2009 to Wicked in 2024 — have been at least partially filmed outside of America. How import duties are supposed to help is, however, a conundrum.
For starters, filmmaking is a highly globalised industry. Funding often comes from a consortium of international investors. Scripts are brought to life through a combination of global talent, real-world settings, and high-end computer-generated imagery. It is difficult to find all that in America. Sure, Las Vegas has its own Eiffel Tower, but Netflix’s recent hit show Emily in Paris would have felt a lot less Parisian filmed in Nevada. Training all-American actors to do foreign dialects also has its limits.
Determining how any such tariff might be applied would be an unenviable task for a White House adviser. What is the appropriate local content requirement? Will any duty apply to movies streamed on platforms such as Netflix, Apple and Amazon? If so, how can it be enforced? Will it also apply to films currently in production, such as Marvel’s latest Avengers instalment which began filming in England’s Pinewood Studios last month? There’s a risk that answers to these complex questions may just be whittled down to a crudely simplistic formula, à la Trump’s “reciprocal” tariffs.
The administration ought to be wary of retaliation too. The US film and TV sector generated a trade surplus of $15.3bn in 2023, with a positive balance of trade in every large market in the world. Last year, global markets accounted for over 70 per cent of Hollywood’s total box office revenue. By wading into duties on the digital services sector, the president could open up a new front in the global trade war, which risks backfiring on the industry.
Analysts reckon film studios would freeze activity until the policy gets clearer. For now, the president has vowed to meet with Hollywood executives before pressing ahead. The White House clarified this week that “no final decisions” on import duties had been made. Trump has also named his own A-team of film stars, Jon Voight, Sylvester Stallone and Mel Gibson, to help devise a plan to bring film production back to the US. Diagnosing Hollywood’s ailments before jumping to the tariff cure-all would help.
Financial incentives on offer outside America have played a role in luring productions abroad, but so have high domestic overheads. Strikes in the US film industry have helped some workers win higher pay and better job protections, but it has also pushed up costs. It is often cheaper to film abroad, and hire foreign filming crews and animators. Doing so juices returns for US movie investors, too. The UK has been particularly alluring, not just for its generous tax incentives, but also its world-class facilities and access to talented staff.
If Trump wanted Hollywood to be more competitive, he might assess the room for deregulation and investment incentives for filming, facilities and visual effects. Duties will only raise the industry’s costs further and sap it of the internationalism that makes TV shows and films truly great. In the meantime, any ambitions for a US-filmed Marvel release of The Tariff Man may need to be put on hold.