Unlock the White House Watch newsletter for free
Your guide to what Trump’s second term means for Washington, business and the world
Donald Trump has said he will slap a 100 per cent tariff on all films produced abroad, expanding his trade war to the cinema industry in order to thwart what he described as the “very fast death” of Hollywood.
The US president made the announcement on his Truth Social platform on Sunday night as he returned to Washington from a weekend at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida, though he did not offer further details.
“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. Hollywood, and many other areas within the U.S.A., are being devastated,” he wrote.
Los Angeles has watched other US states, as well as countries such as Canada and the UK, peel away movie production from California in recent years.
Gavin Newsom, the Democratic governor of California, has proposed a tax incentive scheme to support film production in the state, but Trump is looking at tariffs instead to stymie international competition.
Trump added that he would be authorising the commerce department and US trade representative to “to immediately begin the process of instituting a 100% Tariff on any and all Movies coming into our Country that are produced in Foreign Lands”.
He concluded: “WE WANT MOVIES MADE IN AMERICA, AGAIN!”
While Trump has paused sweeping tariffs that he had proposed last month on a wide range of imports until July — giving his officials time to try to negotiate trade deals with countries around the world — he has maintained levies affecting specific industries such as cars and pharmaceuticals. It was unclear how levies would be applied to films.
The Motion Picture Association declined to comment.
Trump’s plan to apply tariffs to foreign films came amid a burst of social media posts in which the US president also called for a reopening of the notorious Alcatraz prison, which has been closed for more than 60 years.
The US president said Alcatraz, which is on an island off the coast of San Francisco, needed to be “substantially enlarged and rebuilt” to house “America’s most ruthless and violent Offenders”.
“The reopening of ALCATRAZ will serve as a symbol of Law, Order, and JUSTICE,” Trump wrote on Truth Social.
The statement drew a fast rebuke from Nancy Pelosi, the former speaker of the House and Democratic representative from California.
In a post on X, Pelosi said that the president’s proposal was “not a serious one”.
“Alcatraz closed as a federal penitentiary more than sixty years ago. It is now a very popular national park and major tourist attraction,” she added.
