Speaking to BBC Radio 4’s Today programme, he said: “Is it where the money comes from? The script, the director, the talent, where it was shot?”
These are the important questions to asking. I imagine there won’t be strict definitions of “US made” films instead it will be a “vibes” based criteria used to punish people who go against the Trump Administration’s policies.
It’s another control gate on the economy that he can manipulate. He is basically finding ways to insert himself in his amounts of commerce. It’s a trump tax via bribes
How would that even work? At what point do you charge the tariff?
That’s a good question. Everything is digital nowadays, so it’s not like we’re getting film reels from Bollywood.
If I had to wager a guess, the cinemas would probably be paying the tariff at the time of acquiring the license to show the film.
There would be retaliation and Hollywood exports far more than the US imports with entertainment. This would cause much more damage for the US film industry.
hollywood caters to asia mostly now, thats why alot of the movies and actors kinda suck now. thier us market somewhat dying.
I think this is good. It will help local (outside the US) artistic industries space to flourish without being threatened by Hollywood.
Movies all over the world face inmence pressure form competing from Hollywood, buy without that pressure, they could focus on their local strengths instead.
Yeah USians are probably fucked though, but it’s kinda bad to feel bad for the facists and their enablers.
I didn’t vote for him. But fuck me anyway I guess.
There is a whole lot more to a healthy democracy than “I voted”.
i don’t really see how… it’ll make movies from outside the US more expensive inside the US, but it doesn’t effect the price of US movies elsewhere
… without retaliation from many other countries of course, but idk if that’ll happen really: europe has kinda gone with retaliating in other areas: specific to applying pressure rather than broad
International movie makers will stop trying to appease Hollywood because they know that it’s very unlikely their movies will play in the US. So they will focus on other international markets. It’s the same thing we saw with the other tariffs, right? Buyers and sellers are going to look for new business deals in every other country in the world because it makes more sense than dealing with a lunatic who were randomly impose and erase tariffs.
I was under the impression that they film a great deal of movies in Canada because it costs far less than filming anywhere else. We also have places that look very modern while maintaining very gothic cities and all of the land in between that could be filmed to look like many places abroad. So he’s costing the film industry the savings that they have gotten used to by filming in Canada. Art of the deal.
Tons of Hollywood films are shot in Hungary! Dune being one of them, but there’s many many more. Cheap extras, cheap studio space and VFX industry.
Explain to me how the fuck does this fix the economy?…
2+2=5
Making people poorer helps the rich get richer
Not when retaliatory tariffs come up
Ah yes that correct!
I don’t think that’s what he’s trying to do.
Apart from the point that this would be illegal (he won’t know or care, but it is), imagine other countries responding in kind? At least our country imports more media from the US than we produce on our own. And the return tarrifs costs and losses caused by that would also hit primarily US companies like Netflix, Disney, Amazon, AplleTV…
I’m getting so sick of this guy.
Ok? This is current year, I can just use a VPN to stream foreign movies.
I am so tired of all the BS this regime keeps throwing at everything.
Uh, ok, what?
Are we trying to drown out foreign influence now? Like, idk, China? North Korea?
Media is our biggest GDP dollar. Donnie is playing with fire here. I’d bet my life savings he backs down, like he has on everything else.
Maybe he’s talking about movies shot in Canada? I think a lot (no idea of an actual percentage) of movies are shot in Vancouver.
A lot of TV shows and movies are made in Canada because our dollar is worth less, so American companies get more value for their money.
Québec has done a lot of VFX for movies too. Hallmark movies often film in northern Ontario.
…software is next…
🐧
As a dual US and EU citizen, good!* European movies are better than that Hollywood shit anyway.
*for the record, neither this nor anything else Trump is doing is actually good.
Which will result in retaliation against US movies, thus further undermining the US’s unparalleled soft power.
This man is doing literally everything Putin could ever want.
Yup. The US has exerted far more power via blue jeans and culture (movies, music) than it has with bombs.
And probably demanded
The US being by far the biggest exporter of movies, the only way this makes sense is that Trump is not seeing enough ass-kissing (and
bribescampaign donations) from the US movie industry, so he’s actively trying to damage them.Claim foreign movies are a threat, wait for other countries to retaliate against US movies, sit back and watch
bribessales of $TRUMP grow as the major studios seek his political favor.I mean at least this is one of the situations where at its base a tariff makes sense in an industry protectionist way. Its not like putting insane tariffs on goods we dont even manufacture here whatsoever, which is just stupid.
That said, a 100% tariff is just mind bogglingly stupid dick-swinging in this already hostile trade environment. It would make more sense if it was like 5%. Not something that will make the world boycott our media
Actually this doesn’t protect the industry in any way. It’s an extreme threat to American movies, music, and tech. So far, other countries have not been taxing the US on those three classes of items and services, but if they do, it will destroy Apple and Google and Microsoft and Hollywood in a matter of months.
The Chinese market has been huge for Hollywood, a reciprocal tariff would really change the budget math.
The Chinese market is huge, yes, but increasingly turning away from Hollywood productions to homegrown ones. In 2025 for example 哪吒2 (Nézhā 2) broke scored over $2 billion at the box office, with a record-smashing $1.96 billion of that coming domestically. By way of comparison Captain America 4 only managed $14.4 million so far, a dramatic drop from 2016’s Captain America 3 returns of $180 million in 2016.
For reference, even CA3’s $180 million is an order of magnitude smaller than Nezha 2. CA4’s is two orders of magnitude smaller.
Now this is still true: China’s theatre-going audience, estimated at over half a billion people, is larger than the entire population of the USA. It’s still a hugely important market. But, for example, in 2024 the Chinese box office was estimated at ~6 billion dollars total: and 80% of that went to domestic films. The best-performing foreign film of 2024 (Dune 2) only made $48 million, ranking it about 8th. 7th was 维和防暴队 (Wéihé Fángbàoduì/Formed Police Unit) and it made over $120 million.
I’m pretty sure that the Chinese market for Hollywood films is vanishing.
I mean at least this is one of the situations where at its base a tariff makes sense in an industry protectionist way
Except for the fact that - under no circumstances - do you need tariffs to protect a wildly successful industry. That makes no sense because there’s nothing to protect against. It can literally only do harm.
It’s probably just racism.
