Does TV Get a Free Pass in Trump’s Grand Tariff Plan to Save Hollywood?

Trump’s plan to Make Hollywood Great Again by imposing a 100 percent tariff on “any and all Movies coming into our Country that are produced in Foreign Lands” has left the industry with more questions than answers. Like: huh? Or: is this even legal? And our personal favorite: what about TV?

“WE WANT MOVIES MADE IN AMERICA, AGAIN!,” Trump ranted on Sunday evening. “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. Hollywood, and many other areas within the U.S.A., are being devastated. This is a concerted effort by other Nations and, therefore, a National Security threat. It is, in addition to everything else, messaging and propaganda!”

By Monday morning, Trump’s press liaison was already walking all of that back a bit.

“Although no final decisions on foreign film tariffs have been made, 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,” White House spokesman Kush Desai told The Hollywood Reporter on Monday.

For those keeping score at home, that’s a (maybe) tariff on “movies,” “MOVIES,” “MOVIE” and “film.” There is no mention of series, nor the use of a catch-all word like “content.”

That may be by design and Trump only plans to impose a tariff on (feature, we suppose) films produced overseas and imported into the U.S. Or there is no rhyme, reason or thought put into Trump’s word choices. These seem like equally-reasonable options.

The Hollywood Reporter asked Desai about the TV side of the industry. He did not respond.

An answer would be nice because it is an important distinction. Americans consume much more internationally-produced television (in any language) than film. Is Trump conceding that piece of the industry? And if so, why? Because it’s harder to enforce? Because he was a reality TV star? Because film represents more absolute dollars than series?

Again, with Trump, these all seem like equivalent possibilities. There is one more option.

“The guy is a moron,” Michael Pachter, the managing director of equity research at Wedbush Securities, told THR via email.

Trump “doesn’t know what he means, so (he’s) hard to interpret,” Pachter said when we asked for his interpretation of Trump’s latest decree.

Analysts can outright say what journalists can’t.

“Realistically, [Trump] could (on whim) impose this on all intellectual property, including games, books, comics, etc.,” Pachter continued. “He has no idea how bad he is going to make it for the U.S. film industry.”

Film studios have some idea, and their executives already appear ready to jointly lobby Trump off of this podium. The old-school Hollywood banners clearly understand their exposure here, but what about Netflix? The answer, like the proposed tariff itself, is complicated.

Netflix has placed a major emphasis on global expansion and producing local-language programming from every corner of the Earth. Wedbush estimates that 75 percent of Netflix’s overall content is produced outside of the U.S. The majority of Netflix’s library is not produced by Netflix — it is acquired content, meaning the streamer has little control over where it was made.

A spokesperson for Netflix did not respond to THR’s request for comment on Trump’s tariff threat.

Netflix long-ago maxed itself out in terms of U.S. and Canada membership. Therefore, to grow subscribers, Netflix needs to program for the other 188 countries, and they might as well produce the content there too — it’s a hell of a lot cheaper.

Ron Leshem, the creator of hit Israeli-series Bad Boy, now on Netflix, recently told THR that he could have made “five or six seasons” of Bad Boy there for what one episode of a big HBO series costs here. Leshem created the original Euphoria and executive produces the ongoing U.S. version, so he’s got receipts — literally.

Generally speaking, Netflix content is borderless in terms of regional availability — a 100 percent tariff may change that for U.S. audiences. We may not get the next Squid Game (produced in Korean in South Korea), Baby Reindeer (English/Scotland), Money Heist (Spain/Spanish), Lupin (France/French), Adolescence (England), Bridgerton (UK), Wednesday (Romania) or The Queen’s Gambit (Berlin) — massive cultural collateral damage to a political decision. Or maybe we’ll only get them after they’ve proven to be crossover hits in Netflix’s 189 other countries. Fire up the VPNs.