White House: 'No Final Decisions' on Movie Tariffs

President Trump's Sunday night announcement that he plans to slap a "100% Tariff" on foreign films sent shockwaves through Hollywood, but he didn't provide details, and the White House didn't have many new ones to add on Monday. "Although no final decisions on foreign film tariffs have been made, the administration is exploring all options to deliver on President Trump's directive to safeguard our country's national and economic security while Making Hollywood Great Again," spokesman Kush Desai told the Hollywood Reporter.

• The Wall Street Journal reports that Hollywood execs were scrambling Monday to determine how the announcement could affect business. Execs said they were not given advance notice of Trump's announcement.
• Trump said Monday that he will meet with entertainment industry reps, Deadline reports. "I'm not looking to hurt the industry; I want to help the industry," he said. "We're going to meet with the industry. I want to make sure they're happy with it, because we're all about jobs."

• In his Truth Social post Sunday, Trump said the US movie industry is "DYING a very fast death" because other countries are using incentives to lure moviemakers and studios away from the US. Analysts, however, said the uncertainty caused by tariffs could damage an industry that had a trade surplus of more than $15 billion in 2023, the Journal reports. "If this is deployed on a wide scale, it may end up harming the very industry it is supposed to help," Barclays analysts wrote.
• Skeptics complained that the move failed to take into account the international nature of moviemaking. "This makes no sense," a producer in the UK tells Variety. "It implies that a US film is meant to shoot in the US. But the Harry Potter films, Lord Of The Rings, Schindler's List, Mission Impossible, Gladiator, Avatar, and so many more are US films that shot overseas for obvious reasons. Do these films have to shoot in the US from now on? It's an absurd announcement with no meaning nor understanding of storytelling or creative impulses."
• Ann Koppuzha, a lawyer and business law lecturer at Santa Clara University's Leavey School of Business, tells the AP that there is "no precedent or sense" to applying tariffs to creative industries like moviemaking. "Traditional tariffs apply to physical imports crossing borders, but film production primarily involves digital services—shooting, editing, and post-production work that happens electronically," she says. Koppuzha says filmmaking is more like a service that could be taxed, but bringing in a new tax would require the approval of Congress.

(More foreign film stories.)