US president claims that Hollywood is undergoing a ‘very fast death’ despite raking in $30bn in revenues in 2024.
United States President Donald Trump has announced plans to impose a 100 percent tariff on foreign films, claiming that Hollywood is undergoing a “very fast death” due to overseas competition.
In a social media post on Sunday, Trump said he had directed the US Department of Commerce and the US Trade Representative to immediately begin the process of imposing the tariff on “any and all” films produced in “foreign lands”.
“Other Countries are offering all sorts of incentives to draw our filmmakers and studios away from the United States. Hollywood, and many other areas within the U.S.A., are being devastated,” Trump said on his Truth Social platform.
“This is a concerted effort by other Nations and, therefore, a National Security threat. It is, in addition to everything else, messaging and propaganda!”
Asked by reporters about the tariff later on Sunday, Trump claimed that the US was making “very few movies now”.
“Other nations, a lot of them, have stolen our movie industry,” he said. “If they are not willing to make a movie inside the United States, we should have a tariff on movies that come in.”
Trump did not elaborate on how such a tariff would work in practical terms, including whether it would be applied to Hollywood features that involve shooting and production across multiple countries.
Trump’s announcement follows his appointment in January of actors Sylvester Stallone, Mel Gibson and Jon Voight as “special ambassadors” tasked with bringing back business that Hollywood has lost to other countries.
At the time, Trump said the actors would be “my eyes and ears” as he set about instituting a “Golden Age of Hollywood”.
Hollywood has faced tough business conditions in recent years amid the fallout of the COVID-19 pandemic and the 2023 actors’ and writers’ strike.
Hollywood studios grossed about $30bn worldwide last year, down about 7 percent from 2023, according to Gower Street Analytics.
While last year’s performance was an improvement on revenues in 2020, 2021 and 2022, it was still about 20 below the pre-pandemic average, according to Gower Street Analytics.