President Trump on Sunday revealed his plan to revive America’s entertainment industry, which he says 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,” the president noted. “Hollywood, and many other areas within the U.S.A., are being devastated. This is a concerted effort by other Nations and, therefore, a National Security threat. It is, in addition to everything else, messaging and propaganda!”
To address this, Trump said his administration will put a “100% Tariff on any and all Movies coming into our Country” that have been produced abroad.
“I am authorizing the Department of Commerce, and the United States Trade Representative, 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 said. “WE WANT MOVIES MADE IN AMERICA, AGAIN!”
Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick said the department is "on it."
We’re on it. https://t.co/r5zCLxZrem
— Howard Lutnick (@howardlutnick) May 4, 2025
For more than two decades, major studios have shifted movie production to cheaper countries, including Canada, U.K., Bulgaria, New Zealand, Australia and other countries that offer generous tax benefits to build their local economies, luring films away from Hollywood.
The migration of high-paying jobs has become a critical issue for Los Angeles, which has seen a dramatic loss in film production and jobs in recent years.
The industry hasn’t fully recovered from shutdowns because of the COVID-19 pandemic, labor strikes and a retrenchment by legacy entertainment companies, many of which overspent to build streaming services to compete with Netflix. January’s wildfires in the Pacific Palisades and Altadena dealt another blow. (LA Times)
During an interview with C-SPAN on Sunday, he spoke more about the issue.
“What they’ve done is other nations have been stealing the movies, the moviemaking capabilities from the United States,” he said.
“I’ve done some very strong research over the past week, and we’re making very few movies now. Hollywood is being destroyed. Now, you have a … grossly incompetent governor that allowed that to happen, so I’m not just blaming other nations, but other nations have stolen our movie industry. If they’re not willing to make a movie inside the United States, then we should have a tariff on movies that come in. And not only that, governments are actually giving big money. They’re supporting them financially. That’s sort of a threat to our country in a sense.”
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