What happens to Hollywood if Trump targets movies made abroad

President Donald Trump said he would impose a 100% tariff on movies made outside the US. But what does that mean for Hollywood? We break it down.

Transcript

00:00If they're not willing to make a movie inside the United States then we should

00:05have a tariff on movies that come in. So that's the latest in the tariff wars.

00:09President Donald Trump plans to impose a 100% tariff on movies made outside the

00:14US. Trump didn't specify how the tariff would be implemented or when it would go

00:18into effect but experts are anticipating negative impacts on an already hard hit

00:22Hollywood. There are a lot of reasons why US production has left the United

00:26States. Most of them have to just do with money. It's become very expensive to shoot

00:31in the United States and the US doesn't have national tax breaks the way some of

00:36their countries do. Probably prices will go up so either fewer movies will get

00:40made or the movies that get made will be more expensive so it'll be more

00:43expensive to go to the movies. Tickets will go up and then probably fewer people

00:47go to the movies. One of the impacts it could have is that people look to produce

00:52European productions in Europe without the United States at all. Doing them in

00:57English, doing them maybe with American talent but making them entirely European

01:01productions for Europe and almost exclude the United States entirely. The whole movie

01:06industry at the moment is in a crisis already. We had COVID which had a huge

01:10impact on movie going. We had dual strikes. If we add on top of that extra costs of

01:15production or these tariffs it could really have disastrous effect on the industry. I

01:21really don't see anything positive coming from this. Donald Trump has said he's

01:25only referred to movies in his statements about tariffs but it's not

01:29clear that he's going to exclude Netflix productions. So is Squid Game, a Korean

01:35production, going to have tariffs applied to it and will Netflix have to

01:39pull it from its US service or charge American viewers more to watch Squid Game or

01:45The Crown or Money Heist or all these other international productions that

01:50streamers produce outside the United States. Yeah the timing coming just ahead of the

01:54Cannes Film Festival means that's all anyone's going to be talking about. We

01:58were hoping to talk about the films and the stars and the glamour but everyone's

02:02going to be talking about Trump and tariffs and the impact of this on the

02:06independent film industry. So maybe that was Trump's plan. Now he'll be the talk of

02:10the town in Cannes and not Tom Cruise.