29 Sep How Would Foreign-Movie Tariffs Even Work? [Vulture]
BY CHRIS LEE
September 29, 2025 | Update: In another Truth Social post published on Monday, September 29, Trump renewed his threat to impose “100 percent” tariff on foreign-made films. He did not include any more details than he did in May about how the tariffs would work or when they would be imposed. The below article was first published in May when Trump announced his intention to introduce the tariff.
Hollywood went into a collective panic Sunday evening when President Donald Trump posted on social media his plans to authorize the U.S. Trade Representative and the Commerce Department to begin implementing a , 100 percent tariff on imports of movies produced in “Foreign Lands.”
Referring to the mass exodus of productions from the film industry’s spiritual birthplace in California to far-flung locales including the U.K., Australia, Canada, Hungary, and Romania thanks to generous, state-funded tax subsidies in those places, Trump declared a “National Security Threat,” writing, “The Movie Industry in America is DYING a very fast death. Other Countries are offering 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…Therefore, 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. WE WANT MOVIES MADE IN AMERICA, AGAIN!”
Later questioned by reporters outside Air Force Two on Sunday, the president pinned partial blame on California governor Gavin Newsom, elaborating. “Hollywood is being destroyed. You have a grossly incompetent governor that allowed that to happen, so I am not just blaming other nations, but other nations, a lot of them, have stolen our movie industry. If they are not willing to make a movie inside the United States, and we should have a tariff on movies that come in. And not only that, governments are actually giving them big money. They are supporting them financially: So that is sort of a threat to our country in a sense.”
Trump added of the planned tariffs: “It’s been a very popular thing: Moviemakers love it.”