Trump wants US-made films: Producer suggests tariff alternatives

Trump has threatened movies made outside the US with a 100% tariff. Movie producer Chris Fenton joins Market Catalysts to discuss how Trump's efforts to reshore film production would be better accomplished through incentives for US-made films, rather than through tariffs.

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Video Transcript

00:00 Speaker A

Obviously, you know, the movie business is huge out there on the West Coast. We were also looking at Atlanta, which had been such a growth area for the filmed entertainment business over the past few years, but we've now been seeing the number of things being shot there really decline as well. It's been happening in LA to your point. Um, what's been contributing to that besides this consolidation that you're talking about?

00:23 Speaker B

Yeah, well, what's really contributing to it is the fact that we don't have a national policy in terms of film rebate rebates and subsidies. So it's really hard for the United States to compete on a production cost level with the 70 plus nations around the world that do have um nationwide subsidies and rebates. So, there are certain markets around the world where you can actually get as much as 50% of your production costs back by the end of production.

01:00 Speaker B

Here we have states with very aggressive incentives and rebates, but they simply can't compete with that. And then when you look at countries say such as Canada with a currency that's much weaker than the uh United States, you can actually see even a more amplified effect. So, when you look at Georgia for instance, we've lost 50% of the production that was done there since 2022. That's about $2 billion dollars worth of economic direct economic activity and Marvel was a big part of that. And on every Marvel movie, there's anywhere from 3300 to 4500 people that work on those crews. That's a lot of jobs.

01:45 Speaker A

Yeah, it is a lot of jobs. Um as you know, President Trump in the past has floated an idea of tarrifing um films that come into the US, although it hasn't happened. I'm not sure how it work would work from just a mechanics perspective, but it sounds like you think that incentives would be much more effective than something like tariffs.

02:08 Speaker B

Well, look, what we're trying to do is incentivize the studios to keep production here, which is just one industry in order to bring back manufacturing, right? We're trying to do that in the automotive space and technology and various other areas of industry. Uh Hollywood's just another one of those. So, what we're trying to do is get the studios to say, hey, look, it's smart for us to keep production here. How do we do that? Well, there's both a way to do it through rewards and also through punishment, just like raising a teenager, right?

02:44 Speaker B

Um that mix is going to make it uh a way that studios will evaluate and decide to keep it here. Personally, I'd rather keep it on the reward side. More incentives, more subsidies and a way to make it easier and more cost effective to shoot here in the United States. I'd like to avoid the punishment side, which is really the tariff scenario.

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