Let’s get something clear right now. The Trump film tariff isn’t about saving Hollywood. Hollywood isn’t “dying.” It’s evolving. It’s expanding. It’s finally starting to reflect the people who actually watch the movies. So when Donald Trump announced that he wants to slap a 100% tariff on foreign-made films to “Make Hollywood Great Again,” it didn’t feel like policy. It felt like a temper tantrum from someone who still doesn’t understand how this industry works.
This isn’t about creating jobs. It isn’t about helping filmmakers. It isn’t about keeping anything “American.”
It’s about fear. It’s about control. It’s about clinging to a version of Hollywood that should have been retired right alongside segregation and payphones.
Why the Trump Film Tariff Ignores How Global Hollywood Really Is
Hollywood already functions globally. American movies are shot in Vancouver, Budapest, Cape Town and more. That’s not a betrayal of American industry. That’s a reflection of the world we actually live in. Studios go where they can make the best film with the best teams at a sustainable cost. It’s not anti-American. It’s business. And it’s collaboration.
When U.S. studios film overseas, it’s not just Hollywood that benefits. Entire local economies do. Grips, editors and production houses in cities around the world depend on these jobs. If you slap a 100% tariff on anything filmed outside the U.S., you don’t just punish the studios. You punish everyone who makes movie magic happen. From the gaffer in Atlanta to the colorist in Wellington.
Now let’s take a moment to address the right-wing spin.
Conservative talking heads wasted no time praising this Trump film tariff plan. Fox News ran with the idea that this tariff would save the American worker and stick it to so-called foreign propaganda. Robby Starbuck, a former Hollywood producer turned MAGA mascot, claimed this would be a win for “below-the-line” workers and a blow to China.
Let’s be honest. If this crew actually cared about working-class crew members, they would have supported the strikes. They would have backed union protections. They wouldn’t have screamed about “woke Hollywood” every time someone gave a Latino a speaking role.
The propaganda argument is laughable. Foreign propaganda isn’t what’s ruining America. Poverty, climate disasters and a broken healthcare system are. A subtitled indie film from South Korea is not the threat.
So what’s really happening?
Trump doesn’t want to save Hollywood. He wants to control it. He wants to decide which stories get told, who gets to tell them and what those stories say about the world. He is fine with Hollywood as long as it looks and sounds like 1950 (McCarthyism and all). But if the future includes more immigrants, more queer creators and more voices of color, he wants to hit pause.
This isn’t new from Trump as an attack on the entertainment industry that kept him in their pocket for far too long. Look at what he already did to the Kennedy Center. A space meant to celebrate the arts became another one of his culture war battlegrounds. During his presidency, he gutted its board, used it for political posturing and tried to turn a national symbol of artistic excellence into a tool of loyalty. This film tariff is the same script but with a different stage.
This isn’t about patriotism. It’s about censorship. It’s about controlling the narrative and punishing those who refuse to play along.
Trump Film Tariff Claims Hollywood Is Dying But the Data Says Otherwise
The U.S. film and television industry exports more than three times what it imports. That means we’re not being overrun. We’re dominating. We have a trade surplus of $15.3 billion and support more than 2.3 million jobs. Nearly 900,000 of those jobs are direct. The idea that foreign films are killing Hollywood is not just wrong. It’s willfully ignorant.
If anything is hurting the industry, it’s misinformation and moral panic. It’s the refusal to invest in modern infrastructure. It’s the erasure of marginalized creatives who are now, finally, getting their foot in the door.
The real threat here isn’t global filmmaking.
It’s authoritarian thinking.
It isn’t just “foreign” films. It includes American films shot outside the U.S., which happens all the time. Even mid-sized films from major studios rely on international shoots. If you penalize those productions, you don’t just slow down the system. You suffocate it.
And if this is truly about national security, someone needs to explain how filming Deadpool in Vancouver makes America unsafe.
Trump has already appointed Mel Gibson and Jon Voight as his Hollywood “ambassadors.” That’s not leadership. That’s satire. Meanwhile, the governors who are actually supporting the film industry, like Gavin Newsom, are expanding tax credits and making it easier to keep production jobs in-state.
This whole situation isn’t just performative. It’s dangerous. Because when politicians start deciding what kind of art is acceptable, they don’t stop with movies.
Here’s the bottom line.
Hollywood’s strength has always come from its ability to reflect the world, not wall it off. Diversity is not a liability. It’s the only reason this industry still matters.
If Trump wants to wage a cultural war, fine. But let’s call it what it is. A war on imagination. A war on progress. A war on people like me and platforms like mine that exist to amplify the stories that were never welcome at the studio gate.
I didn’t start Hollywoodland News to play nice with bigotry wrapped in policy. I started it because our stories matter. And I’m not backing down now. I didn’t know when I started this platform last year that Trump would keep me so busy, but here we are.
Closing Call:
To everyone in the industry who actually gives a damn, fight for a Hollywood that includes everyone. Don’t let this tariff nonsense distract from what’s really at stake. This isn’t just about where a film gets shot. It’s about whose voices get heard.
And if we’re going to save Hollywood, we better start by saving its soul.
Leave a Reply