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President Donald Trump announced on Sunday that his administration is implementing a 100 percent tariff on all films produced in foreign countries, denouncing them as “propaganda” as he aims to wrest further control over information and the media in the U.S.
In a post on Truth Social, Trump claimed that the tariff would help revive the “DYING” U.S. film industry. He dubiously declared it a “National Security threat” that foreign studios are “offering all sorts of incentives” to draw U.S. filmmakers to other countries.
“It is, in addition to everything else, messaging and propaganda!” the president wrote. “WE WANT MOVIES MADE IN AMERICA, AGAIN!”
It’s unclear how the policy would be implemented, since movies are distributed in numerous ways and may involve foreign labor or locations for filming and other aspects of the filmmaking process. Several recent and upcoming blockbuster films like A Minecraft Movie, Wicked, and Mission: Impossible — The Final Reckoning were largely shot outside of the U.S. by American production companies.
Meanwhile, American’s access to fully foreign-made films, like the recent Oscar-winning documentary No Other Land, could also be restricted under the tariff.
Analysts warn that the tariffs could not only devastate foreign film industries, but also the U.S. film industry, which is the largest in the world. Any potential reciprocal tariffs would also deal a major blow to American filmmaking, experts have said; last month, China already said that it would restrict imports of Hollywood films in retaliation for Trump’s sweeping tariffs on the country. Sunday’s announcement has already caused U.S. media companies’ stocks to fall.
Like Trump’s other tariffs, any raised costs for things like physical media or movie tickets would inevitably be passed on to the consumer.
The tariff announcement comes as Trump and the right have carried out numerous acts of censorship. The right has spent years targeting thousands of books with bans, while the Trump administration has uplifted right-wing influencers, podcasters and news outlets as it attacks legacy news outlets it perceives to be biased against the right.
Experts say that the Trump administration’s attacks on journalism are an attempt to erode press freedom and control the media, restricting information available to Americans in order to suppress viewpoints and demand fealty.
This has come through vague threats and outright attacks to cause capitulation, as with Trump’s attacks on CBS and “60 Minutes”; credential revocations, as with the White House’s attempts to bar the Associated Press from the press pool; and, on Thursday, an executive order Trump signed to defund NPR and PBS, which the outlets are challenging in court. In the order, Trump denounced the outlets as “woke propaganda.”
A recent report by Reporters Sans Frontières found that press freedom has hit a historic low, due in large part to Trump’s attacks.
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