President Donald Trump has thrown yet another hand grenade into the economy, this time in the form of an evening post to Truth Social about imposing a 100% tariff on movies produced overseas. It seems strange to proclaim that “the Movie Industry in America is DYING a very fast death” and suggest a so-called defense that sparks a 3-5% dip in stock price for Netflix, Warner Bros., Disney, and Paramount.
While stocks normalized, the entertainment industry is still trying to figure everything out, especially as Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick indicated he’s working on a policy. This tariff business is getting way out of hand.
It’s unclear what provoked Trump’s proclamation about the necessity of saving Hollywood from financial ruin, but it was this administration’s slapdash nationalism on full display. Trump framed the foreign tax incentives meant to draw American film productions as a “national security threat,” conflating two separate matters conservatives have long wanted to address in Hollywood.
The first is China’s role in steering the messages, imagery, and market considerations of U.S. film productions. The Chinese Communist Party exerts storied amounts of influence through investment firms such as Alibaba Pictures and Wanda Group, financing U.S. film productions and helping to pave the way for Hollywood films to play in China.
Chinese censors who liaise with Hollywood studios push for script changes, such as removing mention of Tibetan monks from Marvel’s Doctor Strange and even minimizing the presence of black actors on marketing materials for films such as Star Wars: The Force Awakens. Incidents have occurred with the Top Gun franchise, Barbie, Spider-Man, and the remake of Red Dawn, which the CCP insisted depicted North Korea as the villain instead of China.
As if North Korea could pull off a land invasion of the United States. But that’s how Chinese influence works: China actively lobbies to make sure anyone is the bad guy in American films except for itself. The importance of this as a geopolitical strategy cannot be overstated. It is a national security threat for a hostile foreign power to steer our entertainment.
Instead of targeting Chinese censorship along the lines of Sen. Ted Cruz’s (R-TX) SCRIPT Act, Trump seems intent on letting California and its Democratic governor, Gavin Newsom, off the hook for wrecking Hollywood.
That’s the second matter Trump has conflated in sounding off about Hollywood’s decline.
Actors Adam Scott and Rob Lowe, famed for Parks & Recreation, bantered on SiriusXM about how U.S. film productions have been pushed overseas by California’s impossibly dense union regulations and taxes.
Lowe gave a damning assessment of governance in California, saying, “It’s cheaper to bring 100 American people to Ireland than to walk across the lot at Fox, past the sound stages — that’s not even talking about union stuff. It’s just tax, economics of it all, so it’s criminal what California and LA have let happen — it’s criminal. Everybody should be fired.”
This should be Trump’s message. Newsom, his Democratic rival and likely challenger to Vice President JD Vance in 2028, has helped to decimate America’s entertainment capital, and even liberal Hollywood actors know it.
Instead, Trump attacks foreign countries that have made it possible for Lowe’s game show to afford its own production.
This week was a quasi-Star Wars holiday, and it’s worth remembering that George Lucas took his 1976 production of the original Star Wars film to Pinewood Studios in the United Kingdom. He was looking to get distance from the Hollywood executives he so loathed and save money on production overseas. Star Wars only exists because a rebellious young director could ditch California, not to mention all the union regulations he wanted to avoid by working with British set crews.
In the age of streaming, it’s also incredibly unclear how the U.S. would even implement a tariff on films produced out of the country. You could tariff a box of DVDs, but that won’t work on digital assets.
Seventy-five percent of Netflix productions are made overseas, which might explain the glut of content on the world’s most successful streaming operation. Is Trump going to copy and paste his “two dolls” suggestion to consumers of streaming content? MAGA is quickly becoming locked into a scarcity mindset, openly hostile to market conditions that allow for more consumer choice.
The idea that shooting a film overseas, whether for cost savings or unique locations, such as the salt flats of Bolivia, the glaciers of Iceland, or the deserts of Tunisia, is somehow unpatriotic is absurd. Taking into account what Lowe said about his game show’s production abroad, what is more patriotic than filming in Ireland to spurn Newsom’s tax regime in California?
Stephen Kent is the media director for the Consumer Choice Center. Follow him @StephenKentX.