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() President Donald Trump announced Sunday he would be putting a 100% tariff on foreign films to encourage domestic production, but the U.S. already runs a trade surplus when it comes to movies.
“Our film industry has been decimated,” Trump said Monday.
The president criticized California Gov. Gavin Newsom for not doing enough to support the film industry and said the industry has “abandoned” the U.S.
Hollywood has long been the dominant force in the film and television world, and while other countries have ramped up production, notably China and India, those countries make most of their money domestically and not from U.S. audiences.
Last year, the 10 highest-grossing movies were all produced in the U.S., and there was not a single foreign-made film in the top 50 films in the U.S.
The U.S. runs a trade surplus when it comes to movies. Numbers first reported by Justin Wolfers on X show the U.S. had a $15.3 billion trade surplus on movies in 2022.
It wasn’t clear from Trump’s Truth Social post exactly how the tariffs would work and whether they would apply to movies shot outside the country and finished in the U.S., which is where Hollywood could feel an impact.
Overseas shooting has increased recently following agreements with unions that sought better agreements for their members, which also increased the cost of shooting in the U.S.
Locations like Canada, the U.K. and New Zealand have been increasingly popular with production companies looking to trim budgets, as have less-expensive U.S. locations like New Mexico and Georgia.
Prior to announcing the tariffs, Trump met with Jon Voight and his manager, Steven Paul, to discuss federal incentives that could help make the U.S. more attractive for filming.
However, Trump did not announce any domestic incentives and instead posted news of the new tariff, which unsettled stock markets after a streak of growth.
The tariffs also mark a shift into tariffing services, which are not typically subject to tariffs the same way physical goods are.
While that raises the possibility of the U.S. levying tariffs on other services, it also opens the door for other countries to levy tariffs on U.S. services, where the country has typically been a net exporter.