President Trump is again threatening to introduce customs on film He shared the social platform Monday morning.
“Our filmmaking business has been stolen from the United States of America, by other countries, just like stealing” candy from a child, “the president wrote.” California, with its weak and incompetent governor, has been particularly hard hit! Therefore, to solve this long time, never ends problems, I will introduce a 100% duty on all films made outside the United States. Thank you for your attention on this issue. Make America good again! President Djt ”
Trump made a similar announcement back on May 4Where he proposed 100% tariffs on all films made outside the United States, and believes that productions are abroad as a “national security threat” and an attempt to undermine US companies. It is not clear what reactivated the threat, although moments later on the same truth social platform, he moved to “significant customs tariffs in all countries that do not make their furniture in the United States.” When Trump threatened customs duties last spring, the White House went back his remarks shortly after going back.
Although filmmaking is increasingly moving abroad with an alarming speed and to places such as Hungary, which offers large tax relief, customs such as these would probably only encourage more dissolution of production, such as IndieWire reported earlier. There is still the question of Can Trump even do this? How do you tax something that exists as a digital file or an idea and is not a physical object or a product, and how will it be enforced?
There is also the even easier question of … How do you shoot in the United States to portray a foreign country when your American-made film is not actually here or requires a sequence shot abroad?
Last time, Trump’s threat to the film industry was not much. Even earlier this year, Governor Newsom (to whom Trump refers here) signed a tax credit of $ 750 million for film and television made in California to keep productions in the United States. He also suggested that Trump collaborated on a national federal incentive that would provide similar benefits, but no formal proposal has occurred.
