US President Donald Trump has ordered tariffs on all films produced outside the US.
Taking to his social media platform on Sunday, Trump said the U.S. film industry was “dying a very quick death” due to “all kinds of incentives” to move production to other countries. Declaring it a “national security threat,” the president ordered “100% tariffs on any and all films coming into our country that are produced on foreign lands.”
But as with so much else in the disastrous Trump administration, a tariff on movies doesn’t make sense. For one thing, it’s unclear how it would be implemented, since a movie isn’t a tangible good like, say, a car. And for another, it would hurt Hollywood as a business, which relies heavily on production in countries outside of America.
Vancouver, for example, has been nicknamed “Hollywood North” because it’s a great place to film in terms of geographic diversity, a strong talent pool, and government subsidies. Many major films have been filmed in the province, including Deadpool and Deadpool 2 , Sonic the Hedgehog and Sonic the Hedgehog 2 , and Tron: Ares, as well as smaller productions like many Hallmark movies . (That’s to say nothing of the major TV productions that film in BC, such as The Last of Us , Shogun , Riverdale , and Yellowjackets. )
Of course, Ontario has also been a major Hollywood filming location with titles like The Shape of Water , X-Men , The Incredible Hulk and Pacific Rim being shot in the province. Altogether, as The Globe and Mail notes, nearly $5 billion in foreign film and TV productions took place across Canada between April 2023 and April 2024.
And finally, limiting production to the U.S. would only stifle creativity. As one film producer noted to Variety , so many American films are shot outside the country for narrative reasons, such as the quintessentially British Harry Potter series in the U.K., the globe-trotting Mission: Impossible films across Europe or the epic Lord of the Rings trilogy in the expanse of outdoor New Zealand.
On Monday, the White House stressed that “no final decisions” have been made on the tariffs . However, it said “the administration is exploring all options to deliver on President Trump’s directive to protect our nation’s national and economic security while making Hollywood great again.”
It’s worth noting that Prime Minister Mark Carney is scheduled to meet Trump in person on Tuesday, so it’s possible this film tariff will be discussed at that time.
Image credit: Shutterstock
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