On May 4, US President Donald Trump announced a 100 per cent tariff on movies produced outside the country, believing that the move would boost the number of films made in America. The result was chaos and confusion within Hollywood as well as film industries around the world, as Trump did not provide details on how the tariffs would be implemented. Even as the President softened his stance on May 5 and stated that a decision would be made only after he met with members of Hollywood, the news has sparked concern in the Indian film industry. After all, the US is a key overseas market that contributes significantly to the box-office revenue of major Hindi, Telugu, and Tamil films.  

As mid-day reached out to producers and trade experts, they unanimously noted the ambiguity of the current situation as it is unclear whether the tariff would apply to payments made to acquire distribution rights of foreign films for their US release. There is also a lack of clarity whether tariffs would apply to movies on streamers as well. Trade expert Ramesh Bala pointed out, “Many American films are shot in Canada, Europe, and elsewhere to lower production costs. If the tariff applies to any part of the film made outside US borders, then many Hollywood films would technically qualify as foreign.”