It seems that US President Donald Trump has had the movies and Hollywood on his mind recently. First, the official White House account on X outraged the large and prickly constituency of global Star Wars fans when it posted an AI-generated image of an uber-buff president brandishing a lightsabre in celebration of the sacred day of May 4th, wishing well to all who celebrated, including “the Radical Left Lunatics who are fighting so hard to bring Sith Lords, Murderers, Drug Lords, Dangerous Prisoners, & well known MS-13 Gang Members, back into our Galaxy”.
Just as that storm was exploding in its teacup online, the 47th president went on Truth Social to reveal the results of his latest deep ruminations on the state of the American film industry and his plans to destroy it, writing that: “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 US. 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! Therefore, I am authorising the Department of Commerce, and the US Trade Representative, to immediately begin the process of instituting a 100% Tariff on any and all Movies coming into our Country that are produced in Foreign Lands. WE WANT MOVIES MADE IN AMERICA, AGAIN!”
This immediately set off alarms in Hollywood and several film industries in the world, including SA, which have become fundamental to the making of US movies and rely heavily on the income from shoots to boost their economies.
Finally, he announced his plan to reopen Alcatraz — the once notorious prison and now a popular tourist destination — to house dangerous inmates. The announcement made little sense until some keen-eyed observers pointed out that a US TV channel had aired the classic 1979 Clint Eastwood-starring action drama Escape From Alcatraz the previous night.
It probably comes as no surprise to many that America’s first reality TV star president relies heavily on movies and TV as inspiration for his policy, even as his ability to tell truth from fiction is increasingly suspect.
But it is worth considering what Trump’s Hollywood proposal would mean for an industry that has outsourced production to foreign lands for decades to evade the strict controls placed on it by American unions. Countries have used tax incentives to attract filmmakers as a way to grease the wheels of local economies and keep the dream factory machine rolling on.
Though the SA film industry has done little to create its own profitable and internationally recognised local production industry, it has carved a very lucrative space for itself as an international production destination.
According to a recent report from the Commercial Producers Association of SA, between November 2023 and June 2024 foreign film productions invested R2.5bn in SA, with projections set to top the R5bn mark by October this year. Those international productions also provided more than 26,500 jobs to local crew and performers and generated an additional R2.50 per production rand spent for the country’s economy. The hospitality industry alone received a healthy R148m injection from film production companies between November 2023 and August 2024.
The trade, industry and competition department offers international productions a 35% tax incentive that has gone a long way to sweetening these deals.
And it’s not just SA that has benefited from the globalisation of Hollywood production — the UK, Canada, Australia and the island of Malta have all made substantial economic gains from luring American productions to shoot on their shores. Most blockbuster films are shot all over the world, with cities from Johannesburg to Vancouver standing in for the actual and too-expensive locations of New York or Washington DC.
Some have seen Trump’s fantastical and possibly totally destructive intention to impose a 100% tariff as a reaction to China’s recent announcement that it would “moderately reduce” the number of US films released there — a decision explicitly made in response to Trump’s decision to impose a 145% tariff on all Chinese goods imported into the US.
Others have blamed Make America Great Again (Maga) evangelist and recently appointed presidential Hollywood tsar Jon Voight, who revealed that he had a meeting with Trump to discuss plans to revive American film production shortly before the Truth Social post. Voight’s plans were apparently not as drastic as Trump’s sweeping 100% tariff, but he did bring the president’s attention to an industry that was unrecognisable from the one he had entered and fallen in love with in the 1960s.
Voight added that “many Americans have lost jobs to productions that have gone overseas. It’s been very serious. People have lost their homes. Can’t feed their families.” The actor may have helped to create a situation that could destroy his beloved Hollywood.
In the days since the announcement, California governor Gavin Newsom, whom Trump very publicly dislikes, has begun to suck up to the president by asking him to seriously consider his proposal for a $7.5bn tax incentive scheme that would lure productions back to the sunny shores of the Golden State. The Democratic governor cheerily posted on X: “Building on our successful state programme, we’re eager to partner with the Trump administration to further strengthen domestic production and Make America Film Again.”
Trump has since backed down slightly, saying that his intention is not to destroy Hollywood but to help it — like so many sectors of the American economy he’s interfered in — be great again.
What he ultimately decides to do may have wide-ranging consequences for film industry workers worldwide who are all praying that he gets bored with the idea and focuses his attention somewhere else.
For now, like a movie plot relayed the day after he has watched it, the details of Trump’s plan remain hard to ascertain, difficult to decipher and probably beyond logical comprehension even as they leave many in the international film industry with something much more dangerous than CGI-generated tsunamis, hurtling asteroids or marauding hordes of bloodthirsty aliens to keep them up at night.
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