GLENDALE, California — President Donald Trump‘s flair for entertainment and spectacle helped him win the White House twice in three tries. However, whether that flair is enough to stem the filming trend of “runaway production” for movies and television shows outside of the United States remains to be seen.
Trump’s pre-presidential IMDB credits include a 1992 Home Alone 2: Lost in New York cameo and, of course, 14 seasons hosting The Apprentice television show, which gave plenty of voters the idea, accurate or not, that he was a business whiz.
In a May 4 Truth Social post, Trump, now in his second nonconsecutive term, instructed the Commerce Department and U.S. Trade Representative to place a 100% tariff on films produced internationally and imported to the U.S.
“The Movie Industry in America is DYING a very fast death. Other Countries are offering all sorts of incentives to draw our filmmakers and studios away from the United States,” Trump said in the post. “Therefore, I am authorizing 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. WE WANT MOVIES MADE IN AMERICA, AGAIN!”
Many foreign cities have offered large tax breaks to film and television studios to shoot movies and shows outside of Hollywood. This has led to many productions shifting operations to places such as Vancouver and Toronto. Dublin has also become an increasingly favorite shooting location for cost-conscious entertainment executives. In response to Trump’s order, Gov. Gavin Newsom (D-CA) is pushing tax credits totaling $7.5 billion to bring back production to Hollywood.
Taking aim at tariffs
The film industry’s most prominent advocate in Congress, Rep. Laura Friedman (D-CA), isn’t impressed with the Trump approach, and she has a unique vantage point, having worked as a film producer in Hollywood.
Her career in Hollywood was before she won elective office as a councilwoman in Glendale, including a stint as mayor. The city of nearly 200,000 people, adjacent to Los Angeles, is a longtime industry-favored filming location for movies and television, including shows such as Hannah Montana, Glee, and CSI. Friedman was elected to the state Assembly in 2016. In 2024, she beat several prominent Democrats in the all-party primary before winning the general election to represent the Los Angeles, Burbank, and Glendale 30th Congressional District. She succeeded Sen. Adam Schiff (D-CA).
“We share the same goal: support American film and television workers and bring production back home,” Friedman said in a May 5 statement about Trump’s film location plan.
But Friedman, whose mid- and late-1990s movie producing credits include the Warner Bros. release It Takes Two and the family film Zeus and Roxanne, which is about the friendship between a dog and a dolphin, isn’t enamored with the Trump administration’s approach.
“If President Trump is serious about maintaining a dominant U.S. film industry and keeping production jobs in the United States, I invite him to join me in fighting for a national film tax credit that levels the playing field with overseas incentives,” Friedman said.
“I’ve been meeting with lawmakers, labor unions, and industry leaders to make this a reality — because we know this approach works, as we’ve seen in states like California and New York,” she added.
Trump’s kernel of a point on ‘runaway production’
Trump’s Hollywood filming tariff directive echoes several other high-profile actions he has made since taking office that get at real problems but take heavy-handed and likely counterproductive approaches, such as his fight against elite universities over their allowance of anti-Israel rule breakers and outlandish deference to woke students and faculty. However, in several cases, these actions are choking off important scientific funding grants.
There is a very real concern that the film industry in the Los Angeles area is dying, with increased production taking place in Canada, Europe, and the United Kingdom.
However, many trade experts consider the planned Trump tariffs on runaway production to be impermissible under World Trade Organization rules. The tariffs are also unenforceable since many movies are conceived and written in the U.S. but filmed worldwide. Live-action superhero movies sometimes have visual effects at five-10 production houses in the U.S. and abroad. Plus, retaliatory tariff schemes by other countries, which are a virtual certainty, likely would be devastating to the industry.
Hollywood insiders, both in front of and behind the camera, have for years bemoaned the high cost of doing business in California.
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In late March, Parks and Rec alums Adam Scott and Rob Lowe mused on a podcast about their current projects. Lowe said his game show, The Floor, films in Ireland because it’s cheaper to fly people there than it is to shoot in Los Angeles.
The pair also complained about how many soundstages are empty in and around Los Angeles. Despite the area’s entertainment infrastructure, without tax credits and other financial incentives at least equal to those of foreign filming destinations, productions have been priced out of Hollywood. This has devastating economic ripple effects on middle-class entertainment industry professionals such as costume designers and lighting technicians.
