White House Says ‘No Decisions Yet’ On Foreign Films Tariff Day After Trump's Announcement
The White House on Monday said that no final decisions have been made about imposing tariffs on foreign films. This comes just a day after President Donald Trump announced a 100 percent tariff on all movies produced outside the US, an announcement that triggered alarm across the global film industry.
White House spokesperson Kush Desai said on Monday that the administration is exploring options to deliver Trump’s directive and ‘make Hollywood great again”.
“Although no final decisions on foreign film tariffs have been made, the administration is exploring all options to deliver on President Trump’s directive to safeguard our country’s national and economic security while making Hollywood great again,” Desai said, as reported by news agency Reuters.
The US president had announced 100 percent tariffs on foreign-made movies on his Truth Social platform, claiming that he had authorised 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”.
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In the post, which was shared on Sunday, Trump warned that the American film industry was “DYING a very fast death” and that other countries were undertaking a “concerted effort” to offer “all sorts of incentives to draw our filmmakers and studios away from the United States,” calling it a “national security threat”.
US Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick responded to this announcement in a post on X on Sunday evening, saying: “We’re on it.”
According to a White House, Hollywood film production witnessed a sharp decline in the first quarter of 2025, with merely 451 "shoot days" for feature films in the region, which was a drop of almost 30 percent from the year before that, Reuters reported.
A report by The Guardian noted that on Monday, shares in US streaming platforms and production companies saw a significant drop as uncertainty loomed following Trump’s post, which did not contain details on whether tariffs would apply to films distributed on streaming platforms.
While Amazon’s shares dipped 1.5 percent, Netflix shares were down 1.7 percent by early afternoon. Warner Bros Discovery and Paramount dropped 1.1 percent and 1 percent, respectively, the report added.
The White House is yet to release any details on the legal basis for the tariff announcement or how its implementation would be done, leaving the film industry confused.
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