Hollywood's biggest winners and losers from Trump's potential movie tariffs

Business Insider

06-05-2025

Hollywood is the latest industry to be brought into President Donald Trump's trade war.
Many in the movie business were spooked when Trump said he planned to impose a 100% tariff on films produced in foreign countries.
Trump said his goal was to stop Hollywood from "dying a very fast death." But while there are more questions than answers, industry insiders and analysts said they felt tariffs could wreak havoc on an entertainment business already struggling to come back from labor strikes and spending cuts.
"It basically will hit the whole industry," NYU entertainment industry professor Paul Hardart said.
Industry insiders said they feared tariffs could raise costs (and potentially sink revenues if other countries retaliate). But there also could be winners, depending on what the ultimate plan is.
White House spokesman Kush Desai said in a statement that "no final decisions on foreign film tariffs" had been made and that the administration was "exploring all options to deliver on President Trump's directive to safeguard our country's national and economic security while Making Hollywood Great Again."
Here's a rundown of the potential winners and losers if tariffs come to the movie business.
Potential winner: US film hubs
Foreign countries have long lured productions with financial incentives. The five top destinations for filming were outside the US, including Vancouver and the UK, a survey of studio executives by production services firm ProdPro found.
If Trump's tariffs steer films back to the US, it would benefit burgeoning hubs beyond LA and New York. Cities like Atlanta and New Orleans have built film industries through tax breaks and lower living costs. At least 18 states have started or expanded film tax incentives since 2021.
Potential loser: Producers, directors, actors, and writers
Although Trump's tariffs appear well-intended, many in Hollywood are afraid of them.
"Tariffs risk triggering retaliation, inflating costs, and stalling productions — hurting the very professionals we aim to support," Producers United, an organization representing producers, said in a statement. The group instead advocated for a federal production rebate to counteract foreign tax incentives.
Film producer Randy Greenberg wrote on LinkedIn that Trump's film tariff proposal would "have the opposite effect" of what it intends and "will kill the movie industry faster."
Morgan Stanley analyst Ben Swinburne wrote in a note that Trump's proposed 100% tariff "would lead to fewer films, more expensive films, and lower earnings for all in the business."
Potential winner: Below-the-line crew
The clearest beneficiary from film tariffs would be those in LA who work in pre-production, production, and post-production, said Schuyler Moore, a partner at LA-based law firm Greenberg Glusker.
Unlike actors and directors, many of these crew members can't easily join overseas productions. The same goes for those in food catering or makeup artists. More films made in LA would make them busier.
"It's clearly a positive for the below-line crew," Moore said. "It's a hammer to everyone else."
However, these workers might not be better off if film production plummets and there are fewer projects overall.
Independent production firms like industry darlings A24 and Neon may be big losers from tariffs.
Global outsourcing helped indie production companies that have less access to financing. Film financing is tenuous, so higher costs could mean fewer films getting made. It could also make it cost-prohibitive for indies to bring films like Neon's Best Picture-winning "Parasite," which came from South Korea, to US audiences.
"If you're going to do something to squash the independent sector, this is what you would do," said Peter Marshall, a former Lionsgate film executive who's now a media consultant.
Foreign TV networks with US exposure could be crushed if there are tariffs or quotas on films or shows, analyst Brian Wieser of Madison & Wall said.
Sean Furst, an overseas-focused producer, said European players have been trying to reduce their reliance on the US entertainment market. If overseas production is penalized, US producers filming abroad could similarly give up on getting US distribution and look abroad.
"Talk to anyone in Europe, and nobody is relying on a US commitment in a finance plan anymore," Furst said, adding that the knock-on effect of tariffs could be a shift to fewer productions with lower budgets.
Hollywood has been slow to adopt AI and has mainly limited it to tasks like post-production, special effects, and dubbing.
However, AI use could speed up as filmmakers look for ways to cut costs. This could mean expanding to generating video from text prompts.
Potential loser: Global streamers
The tariffs have put a spotlight on Netflix, which has the most output and the biggest global footprint of the US streamers. Netflix has been seen by some investors as recession-resistant after reaching utility-like status.
We don't really know how the tariffs would be implemented. But Citi media analyst Jason Bazinet estimated that, in a worst-case scenario for Netflix, it could raise the streamer's costs by $3 billion a year and hit its earnings per share by 20%. He calculated this by assuming Netflix licenses 40% of its total content budget and produces half of the remaining 60% abroad.
However, Bazinet added that Netflix could limit the impact by shifting production to the US, cutting down US access to foreign-made content on the service, and raising prices to cover higher production costs.
Potential loser: Audiences
Frank Albarella, a KPMG partner who studies media and telecom, said tariffs could "inadvertently force audiences to pay more for what could become a narrower creative landscape."
Mike Proulx of research firm Forrester warned that if tariffs go through, there could be fewer films as production costs and the prices of movie tickets and streaming subscriptions soar.
"Any way you slice it, this measure equates to consumer pain," Proulx said.