Business
Hollywood's reaction to Trump's movie tariffs idea: Confusion, dread and a little hope
Hollywood executives scrambled Monday to interpret President Trump’s call for stiff tariffs on movies produced outside the U.S. — a bombshell proposal that would upend how movies have been made for years.
Trump on Sunday night announced that he was authorizing a 100% tariff on movies “coming into our Country that are produced in Foreign Lands.” The proposal, like many other Trump-imposed tariffs, is aimed at bringing a key industry back home.
Studios shoot many of their feature films in Canada, Britain, Bulgaria, New Zealand and Australia. Such countries offer incentives to attract high-paying jobs and get their landmarks featured on the big screen.
“The Movie Industry in America is DYING a very fast death,” Trump wrote on his Truth Social platform. “Hollywood, and many other areas within the U.S.A., are being devastated.”
Studio executives were caught off guard.
Many filmmakers would like to work in the U.S. but would rather see the government institute its own national tax credit. Tariffs, many argue, would hasten the film industry’s demise rather than preventing it, because they would increase costs. Plus, it’s unclear how a tariff on movies would actually work.
“Nobody knows, and I don’t suspect we will for awhile,” said one high-level film industry executive who was not authorized to comment. “Is it on domestically funded foreign productions? Is it on foreign funded ones? Is the tariff on film revenues or film costs on those projects, or both?”
Gov. Gavin Newsom called on Trump to create a federal film tax credit program that provides at least $7.5 billion in incentives to studios that film in the U.S. The governor reached out to the White House Monday evening to encourage Trump to work with California to create a federal credit modeled after the state’s program with the goal of boosting domestic production.
Foreign production incentives have hobbled Los Angeles’ production economy, which has been ailing after COVID-19 pandemic shutdowns, labor strikes and a retrenchment by traditional entertainment companies after losing billions of dollars on streaming services to compete with Netflix. The January wildfires in Pacific Palisades and Altadena dealt another setback.
Production of TV shows, feature films and commercials fell 22% during the first three months of the year, compared with the first quarter of 2024, according to the nonprofit organization FilmLA.
Major entertainment companies declined to comment. The president’s announcement sparked a frenzy of questions, including whether U.S.-based companies, such as Walt Disney Co., Warner Bros. Discovery, Amazon and Netflix, would be subject to the tariffs simply for shooting a movie outside the U.S.
According to data from the Motion Picture Assn., the U.S. runs a $15.3-billion trade surplus with its exports of entertainment.
“This creates an incredible uncertainty in the industry,” said Nick Vyas, founding executive director of the Randall R. Kendrick Global Supply Chain Institute at USC. “This is the one industry where we have created a huge advantage.”
Key details must be worked out, the White House cautioned Monday. White House spokesman Kush Desai said in a statement that “no final decisions on foreign film tariffs have been made.”
Some crew leaders applauded Trump’s instinct to protect American jobs.
“Studios chase cheap production costs overseas while gutting the American workforce that built the film and TV industry,“ said Teamsters General President Sean M. O’Brien and Motion Picture Division Director Lindsay Dougherty in a statement.
But a movie tariff would be complicated in practice.
Similar to Detroit’s auto industry, different phases of production often occur outside the U.S., such as adding special effects.
Tariffs are typically imposed when a product arrives at a port of entry, at which time the importer of record must pay the tax before the item is released. That wouldn’t be feasible for films, which are distributed digitally.
Digital products are also not part of the normal tariff regime, which would make it difficult to determine its valuation, said Tony Gulotta, principal and national tax practice leader at Ryan, a global business tax-focused firm.
Adding to the obstacles, the World Trade Organization also has a moratorium on taxation of digital trade that runs through March 2026, he said.
Administration officials are expected to meet with studio executives and the MPA to seek clarity about whether tariffs will be based on a film’s budget, its revenue, theater ticket prices or streaming service subscriber fees.
Another question: Would television shows, many of which are filmed in Canada and the U.K., be included?
“This is no small thing,” Frank Albarella, a media and telecommunications executive at consulting firm KPMG. “It could be really disruptive to the industry.”
The call to enhance U.S. production comes after Trump tapped a trio of actors — Jon Voight, Sylvester Stallone and Mel Gibson — to be his “special ambassadors” to Hollywood.
Voight and his manager, Steven Paul, traveled to Florida to present a plan to Trump during an in-person meeting this past weekend at Mar-a-Lago.
The plan was developed after meeting with Hollywood unions, studios and streamers, and addressed multiple potential ways to help the U.S. film business. Those included federal tax incentives, co-production treaties with other countries, infrastructure subsidies, job training and “tariffs in certain limited circumstances,” according to a statement from Paul’s production company.
“The American film industry, and Hollywood, is a beacon for teaching the American Dream to the world and is an engine for job growth and career opportunity,” Paul said in the statement.
But it was Trump himself who came up with the tariff plan, a White House official said.
Congressional leaders warned that tariffs were not the best way to boost the American film industry.
“If President Trump is serious about maintaining a dominant U.S. film industry and keeping production jobs in the United States,” said Rep. Laura Friedman (D-Glendale), a former film producer, “I invite him to join me in fighting for a national film tax credit that levels the playing field with overseas incentives.”
Runaway production is a decades-old trend, but leaders say its impact on California has reached a crisis point.
Such programs as Netflix’s “Bridgerton,” and movies including Universal’s “Wicked” and “How to Train Your Dragon,” Warner Bros. “The Conjuring: Last Rites” and “The Fantastic Four: First Steps” from Disney’s Marvel were shot in the U.K.
In addition to lower labor costs, studios have moved overseas to give productions local flavor for audiences in those continents. Films often collect as much as 60% of their revenue from international audiences.
Some experts warned that imposing stiff tariffs could invite reciprocal levies from other territories.
The news could also dampen dealmaking at the Cannes Film Festival in France next week due to the uncertainty of the proposed policy.
Senior debt lenders have expressed concern about how this will affect distribution, said Peter Marshall, managing principal of media insurance services at Epic Insurance Brokers & Consultants.
“If you wanted to time a bombshell statement to frustrate the independent film sector, you would say it now, right before the largest market in the world,” Marshall said. “This will, I think, almost certainly cast a huge pall over that.”
Times staff writers Michael Wilner, Stacy Perman, Taryn Luna and Wendy Lee contributed to this report.
Nike is cutting about 1,400 jobs in its operations division, mostly from its technology department, the company said Thursday.
In a note to employees, Venkatesh Alagirisamy, the chief operating officer of Nike, said that management was nearly done reorganizing the business for its turnaround plan, and that the goal was to operate with “more speed, simplicity and precision.”
“This is not a new direction,” Mr. Alagirisamy told employees. “It is the next phase of the work already underway.”
Nike, the world’s largest sportswear company, is trying to recover after missteps led to a prolonged sales slump, in which the brand leaned into lifestyle products and away from performance shoes and apparel. Elliott Hill, the chief executive, has worked to realign the company around sports and speed up product development to create more breakthrough innovations.
In March, Nike told investors that it expected sales to fall this year, with growth in North America offset by poor performance in Asia, where the brand is struggling to rejuvenate sales in China. Executives said at the time that more volatility brought on by the war in the Middle East and rising oil prices might continue to affect its business.
The reorganization has involved cuts across many parts of the organization, including at its headquarters in Beaverton, Ore. Nike slashed some corporate staff last year and eliminated nearly 800 jobs at distribution centers in January.
“You never want to have to go through any sort of layoffs, but to re-center the company, we’re doing some of that,” Mr. Hill said in an interview earlier this year.
Mr. Alagirisamy told employees that Nike was reshaping its technology team and centering employees at its headquarters and a tech center in Bengaluru, India. The layoffs will affect workers across North America, Europe and Asia.
The cuts will also affect staffing in Nike’s factories for Air, the company’s proprietary cushioning system. Employees who work on the supply chain for raw materials will also experience changes as staff is integrated into footwear and apparel teams.
Nike’s Converse brand, which has struggled for years to revive sales, will move some of its engineering resources closer to the factories they support, the company said.
Mr. Alagirisamy said the moves were necessary to optimize Nike’s supply chain, deploy technology faster and bolster relationships with suppliers.
A bill that would have required insurers to offer coverage to homeowners who take steps to reduce wildfire risk on their property died in the Legislature.
The Senate Insurance Committee on Monday voted down the measure, SB 1076, one of the most ambitious bills spurred by the devastating January 2025 wildfires.
The vote came despite fire victims and others rallying at the state Capitol in support of the measure, authored by state Sen. Sasha Renée Pérez (D-Pasadena), whose district includes the Eaton fire zone.
The Insurance Coverage for Fire-Safe Homes Act originally would have required insurers to offer and renew coverage for any home that meets wildfire-safety standards adopted by the insurance commissioner starting Jan. 1, 2028.
It also threatened insurers with a five-year ban from the sale of home or auto insurance if they did not comply, though it allowed for exceptions.
However, faced with strong opposition from the insurance industry, Pérez had agreed to amend the bill so it would have established community-wide pilot projects across the state to better understand the most effective way to limit property and insurance losses from wildfires.
Insurers would have had to offer four years of coverage to homeowners in successful pilot projects.
Denni Ritter, a vice president of the American Property Casualty Insurance Assn., told the committee that her trade group opposed the bill.
“While we appreciate the intent behind those conversations, those concepts do not remove our opposition, because they retain the same core flaw — substituting underwriting judgment and solvency safeguards with a statutory mandate to accept risk,” she said.
In voting against the bill Sen. Laura Richardson, (D-San Pedro), said: “Last I heard, in the United States, we don’t require any company to do anything. That’s the difference between capitalism and communism, frankly.”
The remarks against the measure prompted committee Chair Sen. Steve Padilla, (D-Chula Vista), to chastise committee members in opposition.
“I’m a little perturbed, and I’m a little disappointed, because you have someone who is trying to work with industry, who is trying to get facts and data,” he said.
Monday’s vote was the fourth time a bill that would have required insurers to offer coverage to so-called “fire hardened” homes failed in the Legislature since 2020, according to an analysis by insurance committee staff.
Fire hardening includes measures such as cutting back brush, installing fire resistant roofs and closing eaves to resist fire embers.
Pérez’s legislation was thought to have a better chance of passage because it followed the most catastrophic wildfires in U.S. history, which damaged or destroyed more than 18,000 structures and killed 31 people.
The bill was co-sponsored by the Los Angeles advocacy group Consumer Watchdog and Every Fire Survivor’s Network, a community group founded in Altadena after the fires formerly called the Eaton Fire Survivors Network.
But it also had broad support from groups such as the California Apartment Association, the California Nurses Association and California Environmental Voters.
Leading up to the fires, many insurers, citing heightened fire risk, had dropped policyholders in fire-prone neighorhoods. That forced them onto the California FAIR Plan, the state’s insurer of last resort, which offers limited but costly policies.
A Times analysis found that that in the Palisades and Eaton fire zones, the FAIR Plan’s rolls from 2020 to 2024 nearly doubled from 14,272 to 28,440. Mandating coverage has been seen as a way of reducing FAIR Plan enrollment.
“I’m disappointed this bill died in committee. Fire survivors deserved better,” Pérez said in a statement .
Also failing Monday in the committee was SB 982, a bill authored by Sen. Scott Wiener, (D-San Francisco). It would have authorized California’s attorney general to sue fossil fuel companies to recover losses from climate-induced disasters. It was opposed by the oil and gas industry.
Passing the committee were two other Pérez bills. SB 877 requires insurers to provide more transparency in the claims process. SB 878 imposes a penalty on insurers who don’t make claims payments on time.
Another bill, SB 1301, authored by insurance commissioner candidate Sen. Ben Allen, (D-Pacific Palisades), also passed. It protects policyholders from unexplained and abrupt policy non-renewals.
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Politicians in Washington and the reporters who cover them have an often adversarial relationship.
But on the last Saturday in April, they gather for an irreverent celebration of press freedom and the First Amendment at the Washington Hilton Hotel: The White House Correspondents’ Association dinner.
Hosted by the association, an organization that helps ensure access for media outlets covering the presidency, the dinner attracts Hollywood stars; politicians from both parties; and representatives of more than 100 networks, newspapers, magazines and wire services.
While The Times will have two reporters in the ballroom covering the event, the company no longer buys seats at the party, said Richard W. Stevenson, the Washington bureau chief. The decision goes back almost two decades; the last dinner The Times attended as an organization was in 2007.
“We made a judgment back then that the event had become too celebrity-focused and was undercutting our need to demonstrate to readers that we always seek to maintain a proper distance from the people we cover, many of whom attend as guests,” he said.
It’s a decision, he added, that “we have stuck by through both Republican and Democratic administrations, although we support the work of the White House Correspondents’ Association.”
Susan Wessling, The Times’s Standards editor, said the policy is a product of the organization’s desire to maintain editorial independence.
“We don’t want to leave readers with any questions about our independence and credibility by seeming to be overly friendly with people whose words and actions we need to report on,” she said.
The celebrity mentalist Oz Pearlman is headlining the evening, in lieu of the usual comedy set by the likes of Stephen Colbert and Hasan Minhaj, but all eyes will be on President Trump, who will make his first appearance at the dinner as president.
Mr. Trump has boycotted the event since 2011, when he was the butt of punchlines delivered by President Barack Obama and the talk show host Seth Meyers mocking his hair, his reality TV show and his preoccupation with the “birther” movement.
Last month, though, Mr. Trump, who has a contentious relationship with the media, announced his intention to attend this year’s dinner, where he will speak to a room full of the same reporters he often derides as “enemies of the people.”
Times reporters will be there to document the highs, the lows and the reactions in the room. A reporter for the Styles desk has also been assigned to cover the robust roster of after-parties around Washington.
Some off-duty reporters from The Times will also be present at this late-night circuit, though everyone remains cognizant of their roles, said Patrick Healy, The Times’s assistant managing editor for Standards and Trust.
“If they’re reporting, there’s a notebook or recorder out as usual,” he said. “If they’re not, they’re pros who know they’re always identifiable as Times journalists.”
For most of The Times’s reporters and editors, though, the evening will be experienced from home.
“The rest of us will be able to follow the coverage,” Mr. Stevenson said, “without having to don our tuxes or gowns.”
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