How Hollywood’s most powerful unions influenced Trump’s movie tariff plan

Hollywood’s biggest unions played a key role in President Donald Trump’s shock announcement of a 100 per cent tariff on all foreign-made movies, a move that could have enormous implications for filmmaking in Australia and around the world.

In a March 11 letter, a leaked copy of which has been seen by this masthead, the heads of the major directors guild and crew union in Hollywood, which together represent almost 200,000 filmmakers, urged the administration to act against “a myriad of unfair trade practices” in foreign jurisdictions that they claim had been “impacting the United States’ film industry for decades”.

US President Donald Trump’s tariffs hit Hollywood, car makers.Credit: Matt Willis

The Minister for Foreign Affairs, Penny Wong, said the government would make its views known to the Trump administration.

“We all know how many films we see, made in Australia, made between Australia and American filmmakers,” she said. “We know how many Australian actors are beloved by American audiences. We obviously will be pressing our view about this to the US administration.”

In the letter – sent to Trump’s trade chief, Jamieson Greer – Russell Hollander, head of the Directors Guild of America, and Matthew D. Loeb, head of the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees, Moving Picture Technicians, Artists and Allied Crafts (IATSE), argued that incentives offered by foreign countries unfairly discriminated against their members.

They also complained about regulations – such as quotas, which Australia does not yet have – designed to ensure local content in foreign jurisdictions is not swamped by Hollywood productions.

“Often under the guise of protecting culture, other countries have erected trade barriers that disadvantage the work of our members and undermine the protections we have collectively bargained for in the US,” they wrote.

“These countries have increasingly turned to non-tariff barriers to disadvantage the works created by our members, particularly in the digital marketplace. Local content quotas on streaming services, predatory tax regimes, local-content-investment obligations, and a myriad of unfair trade practices limits legitimate access to American content and drive foreign audiences toward online piracy.”

As a result, they wrote, “our industry has seen a 40 per cent decline in television production in the US relative to 2022 levels. These trade barriers undercut the ability of the American creative workforce to compete fairly in the global marketplace.”

Much of the credit for Trump’s tariff move has been given to Jon Voight, the 86-year-old actor appointed by Trump, along with Mel Gibson and Sylvester Stallone, as “special ambassadors to a great but very troubled place, Hollywood, California,” as the president declared on his social media platform Truth Social in January.

The Los Angeles Times reported that Voight and his manager, Steven Paul, had travelled to Florida to present a plan to the President at “an in-person meeting this past weekend at Mar-a-Lago”.

That plan was formulated “after meeting with Hollywood unions, studios and streamers”.

According to The New York Times, the pair “suggested federal tax incentives, changes to the tax code, co-production treaties with other nations and infrastructure subsidies”, as well as “tariffs in certain limited circumstances”.

The main target of a 100 per cent tariff on foreign-made films would be the Hollywood studios, which make extensive use of foreign locations and incentives, though it would spell disaster for foreign-language titles seeking distribution in America – a category that contributes about1 per cent to the US box office.

The coming Tom Cruise blockbuster Mission:Impossible – The Final Reckoning, for example, was filmed in Norway, South Africa and the UK, with post-production and visual effects work shared by 11 companies around the globe. Such a spread is typical for big-budget productions.

On Monday, the Trump administration appeared to back away from that proposal, with the White House issuing a statement declaring “no final decisions on foreign film tariffs have been made”.

Hollywood-based Australian filmmaker Phillip Noyce saw some upside for Australian filmmakers in the Trump move.

“The government now will potentially have no excuse not to honour their long-held promise to impose a high level of quota on streamers operating in Australia,” he said. “More genuine Australian production and less foreign shoots will ultimately be good for our industry.”

Robert Connolly, the producer and director of local hits including The Dry, Paper Planes and Forces of Nature, said it was “a great opportunity”.

Connolly believes the local industry has become too dependent on Hollywood productions – which now typically account for nearly half the total industry spend. They are lured to Australia by a favourable exchange rate and taxpayer-funded incentives that can cover up to 45 per cent of a film’s budget.

“There’s a tipping point in a national industry between when it makes too many foreign films and not enough local films – and I think we’re at that tipping point,” said Connolly.

“The government is better off diverting the hundreds of millions of dollars we spend on attracting these big American films to Australian films, to make sure we have a more robust local industry. It’s a great point for us to put a flag in the sand and support our own work.”

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