Trump says ordering '100 percent tariff' on all movies produced abroad

WASHINGTON

U.S. President Donald Trump said on May 4 he was ordering new tariffs on all films made outside the United States, claiming Hollywood was being "devastated" by a trend of U.S. filmmakers and studios working abroad.

The announcement comes as the White House is coming under mounting criticism over its aggressive trade policies that have seen Trump impose sweeping tariffs on countries around the globe.

"I am authorizing the Department of Commerce, and the United States Trade Representative, to immediately begin the process of instituting a 100 percent tariff on any and all movies coming into our country that are produced in foreign lands," he wrote on his Truth Social platform.

Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick reposted Trump's missive, saying "We're on it."

No details were provided on how the tariff would be implemented.

Trump's post comes after China, which has taken the brunt of the U.S. president's combative trade policies with 145 percent tariffs on many goods, said last month it would reduce the number of U.S. films it imported.

"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," Trump wrote Sunday.

"Hollywood, and many other areas within the U.S.A., are being devastated," he added, claiming that production being drawn to other countries was a "National Security threat."

The implications for the movie industry or how exactly the tariffs would be enacted were not immediately clear.

There was also no mention in Trump's post of whether television series, an increasingly popular and profitable sector of production for the screen, would be affected.

Hollywood is a major sector of the United States' economy, generating more than 2.3 million jobs and $279 billion in sales in 2022, according to the latest data from the Motion Picture Association.

But in the wake of the Hollywood strikes and the COVID pandemic impacts, which changed how Americans consumed movies, opting to watch at home instead of in theaters, the industry is still struggling to regain its momentum, industry insiders say.