The Movie Business Is Tariff-ied

A bone-headed White House tariff that’s high on outrage and low on details? Must be another Monday in TrumpWorld.

After declaring in his erratic uppercase-lowercase syntax that cinema has become a “National Security threat,” President Trump just slapped “a 100% Tariff on any and all Movies coming into our Country that are produced in Foreign Lands.” 

Does that mean co-productions or films made entirely overseas? Does it apply only to studio films that shoot abroad to enjoy enticing subsidies, or just to scrappy little indies that, by their nature, have to cobble together financing from all over the place? And how does it affect foreign-language film distribution? 

The only accurate part of his proclamation is its opening statement. “The movie industry in America is DYING.” Amen, brother. 

To his credit, Trump is trying to ameliorate the very real economic and cultural cratering of the American film industry. When it comes to actually making movies in Southern California’s nearly limitless sunshine and diverse terrain, Los Angeles is a shadow of its former self. “Made in Hollywood, U.S.A.,” its productions used to proudly tout in their end credits. Now, not so much.

Over the past few decades, foreign governments’ tax incentives and rebates have lured film and television production overseas—most famously to Canada, where Vancouver reliably doubled as any America city, suburb, or rural area you needed it to be. I’m looking at you, First Blood, 21 Jump Street, Jumanji, Twilight: New Moon, and Hot Tub Time Machine! 

But just as nagging a drain is the regional film hubs around the U.S. that also siphon off a ton of production from Los Angeles. Take Atlanta, where studios shot everything from The Hunger Games and the Accountant to Black Panther and Hidden Figures, either partially or in full.

And international productions are legion, of course, dating back to the Lumière brothers making their short films in France in the 1890s. The Lord of the Rings trilogy made New Zealand a hotbed of production, long after Xena first put it on the map in the 1990s. They always shot James Bond movies t in England, and all nine of the Skywalker-saga Star Wars films reliably used British sound stages.  

Trump isn’t wrong to question why studios are shooting abroad. I’m not a business reporter, and brighter minds have written sharper articles about the high cost of union labor and raw materials contributing to the decline of production in and around Los Angeles—so take their word for it, not mine. California Governor Gavin Newsom has also been doing his best to create stopgaps that will keep, and hopefully grow, L.A.’s film production, by more than doubling the state’s tax credit programs from $330 million to $750 million.

Not everything needs to be made in Hollywood, naturally, nor should it. Ryan Coogler filmed this spring’s white-hot megahit Sinners entirely in Louisiana (not, by the way, in Mississippi, where the story takes place, but close enough). And the Academy Awards just showered Oscars all over Best Picture winner Sean Baker’s Anora—a New York story whose authenticity could not have existed anywhere else in the world. 

Then again, Demi Moore’s glamor-grindhouse comeback triumph The Substance—a quintessential L.A. story for the ages—was shot completely in and around Paris due to its French writer/director/producer Coralie Fargeat. Under Trump’s plan, that film would have cost its distributor Mubi twice as much to bring to the U.S., which might have dealt a fatal blow to its marketing strategy in this country. And I can guarantee you that Moore and her little dog Pilaf would not have been making the red carpet rounds this past awards season.

Ironically, the French-produced, Spanish-language Emilia Pérez might have been fine. Because Trump’s 100% tariff is notoriously vague, it makes no mention of television productions. And since Netflix is a streamer that eschews theatrical distribution, it might just be immune. Who knows? 

Hopefully Trump’s presidential edict will make studios reroute more international work back to the U.S. Right now, Disney is planning to shoot Avengers: Doomsday in the U.K., not to mention the fourth Tom Holland Spider-Man. But these CGI lovefests never really seem site-specific from a practical point of view, in that their digital palettes makes them take place seemingly everywhere around the world. And unless Peter Parker is relocating from Queens to Liverpool, I don’t see why they need to film that movie there.

That said, Universal is currently making Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey in Morocco and its surrounding areas—which makes sense, of course, because it’s The fucking Odyssey. You’re going to penalize a British filmmaker who lives in Los Angeles for making his Odyssey movie in the Mediterranean? By the way, he’s also shooting part of his latest epic in Los Angeles. So maybe give him a waiver.

Cover image by Bing Microsoft Image Generator.