Culture | Lights, camera, tariffs?

Hollywood is in trouble. Politicians should not try to save it

Tariffs will not help, and taxpayers have no good reason to

An illustration of a film reel showing frames of the Hollywood sign with one of the letters falling down.
Illustration: Carl Godfrey/Getty Images
|LOS ANGELES|6 min read

IN “HOME ALONE 2” he made do with a cameo. Now Donald Trump has cast himself in the role of Hollywood’s saviour. “The Movie Industry in America is DYING”, America’s president posted on May 4th on Truth Social, his social-media site. Other countries’ “concerted effort” to lure film production away not only hurts the economy, but also poses a “National Security threat”, he claimed, since foreign films are used as propaganda. To redress these ills, Mr Trump proposed a 100% tariff on films produced abroad.

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This article appeared in the Culture section of the print edition under the headline “Lights, camera, tariffs?”

From the May 10th 2025 edition

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