A man walks past movie posters at at AMC Theater in Montebello, California on May 5, 2025. | Frederic J. Brown/AFP via Getty Images
TINSELTOWN TARIFF — Hollywood was in a panic last night and into the early hours of today after Donald Trump, seemingly out of nowhere, announced that there would be a 100 percent tariff on movies made abroad.“The Movie Industry in America is DYING a very fast death,” Trump said in a statement on Truth Social. He attributed this to filmmaking incentives provided by other countries and described it as “a concerted effort by other Nations and, therefore, a National Security threat.”
Hollywood immediately panned the idea and portrayed it as an existential threat to the U.S. film and TV industry.
By early afternoon today on the East Coast, the White House seemed to back off, according to a statement provided to the Hollywood Reporter: “Although no final decisions on foreign film tariffs have been made,” a spokesperson said, “the Administration is exploring all options to deliver on President Trump’s directive to safeguard our country’s national and economic security while Making Hollywood Great Again.”
Trump’s threat, however, may prove to be more than just political theater.
That is because the president’s claim — that there is some sort of “National Security threat” to Hollywood — underscored the unprecedented legal position that the administration has taken to support the bulk of Trump’s proposed tariff regime across all sectors.
The administration has largely relied on a once-obscure emergency economic powers law passed in 1977 that is known as the International Economic Emergency Powers Act (IEEPA). The law authorizes the president to take certain actions if he declares a national emergency resulting from an “unusual and extraordinary threat” originating outside the U.S. “to the national security, foreign policy, or economy of the United States.”
To support his tariffs, Trump had already declared emergencies concerning the opioid crisis, illegal immigration and — much more broadly — “trade deficits.” Many independent experts generally reject these claims.
But the notion that there might be a national security threat resulting from filmmakers producing their movies overseas seemed almost designed to draw attention to the novelty and expansiveness of the administration’s legal position. In fact, the Trump administration’s position would effectively provide the president with carte blanche to institute tariffs anywhere in the world at the drop of a hat.
It’s a highly suspect theory that has already drawn at least seven lawsuits to date.
Next Tuesday, the most high profile court proceeding on the matter so far will take place, when a panel of three judges on the U.S. Court of International Trade will hold oral arguments on a motion filed on behalf of a group of small business owners seeking to block Trump’s tariffs under IEEPA.
It is far from clear what the judges will do, but the same panel is presiding over a separate case brought by 12 Democratic state attorneys general challenging the tariffs. Last week, the judges invited the attorneys general to weigh in on the pending motion filed by the small businesses — a potential sign that they are taking both challenges seriously.
Given the court schedule, Trump’s suggestion that he could implement tariffs to save Hollywood from a supposed national security threat — over the industry’s own evidently strenuous objection —may have been ill-timed.
You can safely assume that the plaintiffs challenging the Trump tariffs — and maybe even some of the judges presiding over their cases — are taking note of this latest escalation.