President Donald Trump’s latest salvo against Hollywood’s runaway production landed Monday morning on Truth Social, where he pledged to impose a “100% Tariff on any and all movies made outside of the United States.” In the post, the president accused foreign countries of “stealing” America’s moviemaking business and took shots at California Gov. Gavin Newsom for failing to keep productions in Hollywood.
The president’s pronouncement was quickly overtaken in the news cycle, first by the unveiling of the Trump-Netanyahu Gaza peace plan, and then by the U.S. federal government shutdown. But Trump’s tariff threat continues to reverberate across the global entertainment industry, where many worry that the damage could be felt long after the president’s social-media post has been forgotten.
“This will mean less demand for our soundstages, tech upgrades, crew and training and, of course, mass layoffs,” says Lowell Schrieder, a Canadian talent manager for CK Talent, whose clients regularly work on U.S. studio shoots in Toronto. “So the impact would be crushing. Under these circumstances, studios won’t even consider shooting in Canada. [It’s] a crippling mess for co-productions, financing and development.”
Ontario has long marketed its robust soundstage infrastructure and lower costs as an alternative to Hollywood. If Trump’s tariff threat were ever implemented, Canadian officials fear those advantages could evaporate overnight. Even the suggestion of such a levy, argues Schrieder, could be enough to spook studio executives weighing where to place their next tentpole.
Trump first issued the “100% tariff” warning back in May, on the eve of the Cannes Film Festival, and, so far, no legislation has emerged to turn the threat into law. Instead, the discussion has been moving towards new tax incentives — Newsom’s new bill doubling California’s annual tax credit program to $750 million a year, calls for a federal tax incentive for film and TV — and away from the idea of penalizing productions that shoot outside the country.
Rep. Laura Friedman and Sen. Adam Schiff on Monday seized on Trump’s post to argue again for a federal credit.
Without concrete legislation, it’s hard to know what Trump’s “100% Tariff” would actually mean. Would it apply to films shot outside the U.S., regardless of financing? What about productions that shoot partly in Los Angeles but do post in London or VFX in Vancouver? A typical Hollywood blockbuster today can be assembled across half a dozen countries. How will it be determined which have been “made” in the U.S. and which internationally?
The uncertainty hasn’t stopped governments from taking Trump’s threat seriously. Australia’s arts minister, Tony Burke, pledged his government would “stand up unequivocally for the rights of the Australian screen industry.” Ontario Creates, the government agency supporting the country’s largest provincial production hub, issued a cautious statement noting that “it is challenging to determine the potential impacts of tariffs until a policy is outlined,” but stressing that “we will [make] all efforts to maintain Ontario’s reputation as a top production jurisdiction.”
International producers and backlots also worry that the threat of tariffs could be used by Washington to leverage concessions for national governments trying to protect their own cultural industries. Canada’s Online Streaming Act, which requires foreign streaming services with substantial revenues in Canada to contribute 5 percent of those revenues to support Canadian and Indigenous content, has been in the crosshairs of U.S. lawmakers for years. Germany is in the middle of a heated debate over its own so-called “Lex Netflix,” a proposed law that would force global streamers to plow a fixed percentage of their German revenues back into local production, akin to similar requirements in France, Italy, and several other EU countries.
Whatever their substance, Trump’s tariff threats have underscored just how fragile the global production ecosystem has become — and how easily an industry built on cross-border collaboration can be shaken. Nicholas Simon, CEO of Bangkok-based Indochina Productions, which has serviced The White Lotus Season 3, Monarch: Legacy of Monsters and Meg 2, says it is Trump’s unpredictability that makes the rhetoric so unsettling. “Everything very quickly went back to normal [last time] — within the span of about a week,” Simon recalls of Trump’s earlier tariff threats in May. “If Trump actually targets production this time, it will spook the industry and have real repercussions. If it’s just his usual flatulence, it will dissipate quickly.”