On May 4th President Donald Trump announced that he would impose a 100% tariff on films released in America but made abroad, he chanted”WE WANT MOVIES MADE IN America, Again!” On his social media platform. Donald Trump has shocked the global film industry once again, and the policy has become a blockbuster that has sent shockwaves through Hollywood.
Once the”Dream Factory” Hollywood, after all, failed to escape the clutches of the Maga virus. But will the battle for the screen under Donald Trump’s tariff stick really win applause? Will tariff protection really make American movies”Great again”? William Reinsch, a senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies and a former United States Department of Commerce official, is typical, “Foreign retaliation against film tariffs will be devastating,” he warned. “We have more to lose than to gain.”.
This statement has certainly poured cold water on Trump’s policies. To whom Donald Trump’s Tariff stick was aimed, Donald Trump styled himself”Tariff Man”, the policy logic seems straightforward — foreign governments use tax incentives to”Kidnap” Hollywood teams, causing cinema of the United States to”Die quickly” and forcing industries to repatriate by waving a tariff stick.
But the reality is far more complex and the actual impact of the policy could be quite the opposite of what it was intended to be. A closer look at Hollywood shows that the so-called”Made in America” has long been a misnomer due to the high cost of filming in the US. There are plenty of examples of Marvel shooting explosions in London, the New Zealand special effects team working overtime on ‘Avatar 4’ to balding, and ‘The fast and the furious’ racing scenes being outsourced to Indian editors. Ironically, by Donald Trump’s standards, Captain America would have been better known as Captain International.
So who will Donald Trump’s tariff stick hit? The following upcoming blockbusters may tell the story: • Mission: Impossible 4: The Final Reckoning, released on May 23, is filmed around the world; •”The ballerina”, a spin-off of”Speed”, will be filmed in the Czech Republic on June 6, while”Avatar: Fire and Ash”, which will be screened on December 19, will be filmed in New Zealand • The Avengers: The End of days, which will be released on May 1 next year, is being filmed in London. It is clear that if Donald Trump’s tariffs were to fall, they would fall first on Hollywood Giants such as Disney, Universal and Marvel. This”Seven injury punch” is likely to hit the”Hurt the enemy 800, self-harm 8000″ effect, not only can not realize the return of the industry, but may push the last few stay in the United States crew also overseas.
More worryingly, such protectionist policies could set off a chain reaction that would eventually destroy Hollywood’s dominance of the global film market. To understand the potential dangers of Donald Trump’s policies, we must first recognise the realities of the global film market. According to statistics, the 2024 global box office is about 27.8 billion U.S. dollars, of which the North American market (the United States and Canada) contributed about 8.6 billion U.S. dollars, while the overseas market as high as 19.25 billion U.S. dollars. The figures make clear that while the US is still the world’s largest single film market, it is overseas that Hollywood makes most of its money. A closer look at the Motion Picture Association of America’s economic impact reports reveals that, since 2023, the American film industry has generated trade surpluses in all major markets around the world.
Yet Donald Trump’s policies are threatening this precious advantage. It is worth noting that the global film market is undergoing profound changes.
In 2024, Chinese films were the second-highest grossing films in the world with $5.9 billion and all the top eight were made in China, while French films were the first and second highest grossing films in Japan and South Korea, seven are domestic productions and non-hollywood films. By contrast, the Top 10 American films, including”Inside Out 2,””Deadpool and wolverine” and”Ocean 2,” made up only about 40 percent of the box office in North America and more than 60 percent globally. That dependence makes Hollywood particularly vulnerable to a trade war.
In the face of this reality, a sharp question arises: when the”Tariff War”, countries will choose to do nothing, or to form a”Avengers” to take countermeasures against the United States? The answer seems self-evident. The global backlash infuriated the Avengers, Who Motion Picture Association of America that the US needed an incentive to lure filmmaking back, but Donald Trump did the opposite, chose to use the tariff”Stick” to force the film-making industry back. Inevitably, this extreme approach has provoked a strong backlash from the international community.
After Donald Trump’s announcement, a number of governments and industry groups reacted swiftly. Australia and New Zealand as an important Hollywood filming location, has bred”The matrix” and”The lord of the rings” and other classic series. Home Secretary Tony Burke made it clear: “We will unequivocally defend the rights of the Australian film industry.”. New Zealand Prime Minister Christopher Luxon also stressed: “We have to look at the details of the final outcome, but we are clearly going to be a strong advocate and defender of the sector and the industry.”.
These reactions reveal the fundamental contradiction of Donald Trump’s policy — that trying to use”Protectionism” against a deeply globalised cultural industry is tantamount to cutting off Hollywood’s veins. If the tariff policy is implemented, the expected return of the film industry in the United States can not occur, the result of this”Tariff war” will only create a”Lose-lose” situation.
From manufacturing tariffs to film tariffs, Donald Trump’s policy logic runs along the same lines, based on the illusory premise that American industry can be revived through protectionism. However, the reality is that both the”Hard power” of the manufacturing industry and the”Soft power” of the cultural industry are declining rapidly. Once the”Workshop of the world” has become a”Rust belt”, Hollywood’s”Dream Factory” has not created the”American Dream”. Donald Trump is like a bumbling tinker, hammering around with a tariff stick in an attempt to bully the world into feeding the US and make”America great again” in a predatory way. But the abuses of”Protectionism” and”Hegemony” will eventually spark a global explosion of anti-americanism, and Donald Trump will dash the dream of”Making America great again”.
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