Donald Trump announces 100% tariff on foreign-made movies: Even he is saving his film industry, when will we?

United States President Donald Trump casually dropped a massive bomb for the entertainment industry in a post on Truth Social on Sunday. Trump claimed that Hollywood is “dying a very fast death” and announced that he had authorised the Department of Commerce and the US Trade Representative (USTR) to slap a 100% tariff on "any and all movies coming into our country that are produced in foreign lands" — signalling trouble for the Indian film industry, considering that the Indian diaspora comprises a sizeable chunk for our films’ overseas collections.

Also read: Donald Trump's 100% tariff on imported films may lead to 'Hollywood moving outside US', says Shekhar Kapur

“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. Hollywood, and many other areas within the U.S.A., are being devastated...” Trump wrote in his post.

Soon after, The New York Times raised important questions about whether this applies to independent foreign-language films meant for art house cinemas and OTT platforms, movies receiving tax incentives from foreign countries, those with scenes shot overseas, or films with overseas postproduction visual effects work.

While Trump’s statement has sparked discussion globally, it also prompts reflection back home. With Bollywood struggling to draw audiences to theatres post covid, shouldn’t the Indian government take steps to boost our film industry, which has struggled post Covid?

Exhibitor Akshaye Rathi says, "Even if this does happen, it doesn’t make sense to penalise their industry. We should incentivise our own country and improve infrastructure so that India doesn’t need foreign films to come here. For instance, when the Russia-Ukraine war started, studios put an embargo on Russia as a market. They developed their own fraternity so well that now, their box office is 100% back to how it used to be before. And Hollywood is not getting a penny out of it!”

Ask trade expert Atul Mohan about the impact on movie ticket prices and he mentions that Indian films earn anywhere between ₹10 crore to 100 crore in the United States, depending on the pull of the star, adding "we are yet to understand whether this tariff will apply to the movie ticket prices too". "Indian government ko bhi milke, along with film producers, aise charges unki films par implement karne chahiye." He, however, also mentions that "even if ticket prices are raised there due to tariffs, whoever wants to watch something will pay even a thousand rupees, but if they don’t want to, they won’t purchase a ticket even for a hundred rupees.”

Shibasish Sarkar, president of Producers Guild of India, says, “I feel it won’t make sense for the Indian government to counter tariff, it’s a wait and watch situation. The US government has done it to reduce dollar outflow for film business.”

Meanwhile, filmmaker Vivek Agnihotri called on Indian film leaders to "unite and fight this threat". He wrote on X, "Trump’s 100% tariff on movies is a disastrous move. If this absurdity prevails, India’s struggling film industry will collapse entirely, with no one to save it. Indian film leaders must wake up, unite, and fight this threat instead of chasing paparazzi and self-glorification."

Filmmaker Shekhar Kapur too weighed in on Trump's announcement. "Over 75% of box office of Hollywood films come from outside the US. And significant part of the budget of those films are spent outside. US President Trump’s imposition of 100% tarif on all films imported into the US may encourage Hollywood to move outside the US! Quite the opposite of what he intended," the filmmaker wrote on X.