Could Hollywood North wind up on the cutting room floor?
U.S. President Donald Trump’s latest tariff target is movies produced outside the U.S., spelling trouble for Canada’s multibillion dollar film and TV industry.
Ontario’s tourism and culture minister Stan Cho called the situation “unacceptable,” but hopes Trump might hold off.
“I don’t think we can sugar coat the potential impact … on the industry.”
Late Sunday, Trump posted on Truth Social that he intends to impose a 100 per cent tariff on movies produced outside the U.S.
“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,” Trump posted. “Hollywood, and many other areas within the U.S.A., are being devastated.”
Trump also called foreign-produced films “propaganda” and “a national security threat.”
“WE WANT MOVIES MADE IN AMERICA, AGAIN!,” Trump added.
In 2023, Canada’s film and TV industry had $12.2 billion worth of production, and contributed roughly $14 billion to Canada’s Gross Domestic Product.
Hala Hunny, a filmmaker based in Toronto, said Trump’s latest move is self-defeating.
“Trump is shooting the U.S. movie industry in the foot by proposing 100 per cent tariffs on films shot outside of the country,” said Hunny. “Films have always been shot all around the world, even during Hollywood’s booming days.”
Hunny said the U.S. might not even have enough production capacity to take the overflow of movies currently shooting in Canada.
“I think there will be a lot of push back from major studios, streaming companies and major producers as well,” Hunny added.
The head of one media production union local scoffed at Trump’s claims that foreign-produced movies are a threat to U.S. national security.
“The idea that these films and shows are a threat to national security? It’s ridiculous,” said Ryan Pogue, president of Unifor local 700, which represents film and TV production technicians in the Toronto area. “It’s clear he wants to bring all the jobs back to L.A.”
Industry experts, unions and people from across Ontario’s and Toronto’s political spectrum slammed Trump’s latest tariff threat.
“We expect to have a major impact if he goes through with these threats,” Cho also told reporters. “We’re waiting. We’re hoping he doesn’t go through with these threats, of course, and he changes his mind on his post. But we’re going to react to what is actually in reality, as opposed to things that are posted on (social media).”
Ontario NDP Leader Marit Stiles, a former policy director at ACTRA (Alliance of Canadian Cinema, Television and Radio Artists), said the province has built up an “extraordinarily highly skilled workforce” in the film and television industry, and the government can’t afford to sit back.
Stiles worries the tariffs will hit not just film but television productions as well.
With COVID shutting down productions, followed by actor and writer strikes in the U.S., the film production sector has “already taken a big hit … the folks who are employed in this industry are already suffering. We cannot afford another hit,” Stiles said. “If we lose that sector, and we lose those jobs, they ain’t coming back.”
Toronto Mayor Olivia Chow said Trump’s threat is an overly simplistic look at a highly complex industry.
“The film industry is very global. And it’s not as simple as saying ‘we’re just going to make everything in the U.S.A.,” said Chow, who estimated that the film and TV industry employs 30,000 people in Toronto, and adds $2.6 billion to the city’s economy annually. “I can’t imagine what would happen to this industry.”
The tariffs will hurt the industry on both sides of the border, warned the head of the Canadian Media Producers Association.
“The proposed actions outlined in U.S. President Donald Trump’s announcement,” said CMPA president Reynolds Mastin, “will cause significant disruption and economic hardship to the media production sectors on both sides of the Canada-U.S. border.”
Industry experts say the supply chain of how a film gets made is as complex as the auto industry.
“The problem is that the inputs (for movies) come from so many different places,” said U of T film studies professor Charlie Keil. “To try to disentangle that immediately is again somewhat akin to what he’s trying to do with automobile manufacturing.”
Like vehicles, most major films are not produced in a single country, but rely on services and products from around the world.
A single feature film might be shot at a studio in Eastern Europe, while relying on a special effects company in Canada and an animation house in Australia.
For years, state governments like California have tried to attract more production through tax incentives.
It’s also unclear, Keil added, just how tariffs would work. Would the 100 per cent only apply to the cost of each non-U.S. service or good used in a movie, or would it be a blanket 100 per cent for the whole film?
Keil suggested theatres could start adding surcharges for movies which face tariffs.
Because tariffs wouldn’t make it cheaper to create an all-U.S. production, Trump’s approach would make it harder for studios to get movies made, and would likely push the film industry into a “kind of paralysis,” Keil said, “rather than stimulate domestic production.”
Dozens of films and TV shows are being produced here at any given time, with many destined to be shown in the U.S. — often with Toronto standing in for American cities.
With files from Star wire services
