Trump Has “No Authority” To Impose 100% Movie Tariffs, Gavin Newsom Says; Studios Scrambling To Find Out What POTUS Wants

Typically Trump, the details of POTUS' 100% tariffs on movies made overseas are vague but what is already clear is that the Governor of California isn't playing a supporting role

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EXCLUSIVE: Typical of Donald Trump, the details of POTUS’ just announced bombshell 100% tariffs on movies made outside America are vague. Yet, what is already very clear, as studios and streamers try to figure out next steps, is that the Governor of California won’t be playing a supporting role.

In fact, as Gavin Newsom pushes for his plan to more than doubling of the state’s film and TV tax incentives to $750 million annually, Trump’s newest tariff missive sets up a showdown between the Governor and the President over who truly wants to save the home of Hollywood.

Related Stories NewsDonald Trump Says He's Pursuing 100% Tariffs On Movies Produced Outside U.S., Calling Runaway Production "A National Security Threat"

Contacted by Deadline, Newsom’s office had no comment tonight on Trump’s social media declaration “authorizing the Department of Commerce, and the United States 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.” Even with Newsom slagged as a “grossly incompetent governor” that let Hollywood be “stolen” later Sunday by Trump on the South Lawn of the White House, the Governor’s team are taking a wait and see approach until more specifics are made available of the president’s desire for “MOVIES MADE IN AMERICA, AGAIN!”

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However, as Trump claimed runaway production “is a concerted effort by other Nations and, therefore, a National Security threat,” Governor Newsom’s office were not shy about advocating the rule of the actual law.

“We believe he has no authority to impose tariffs under the International Economic Emergency Powers Act, since tariffs are not listed as a remedy under that law,” Newsom senior advisor for communications Bob Salladay told Deadline this evening of the president’s undefined threat against overseas productions and their incentives. Perhaps setting the stage for another lawsuit from the Golden State against the MAGA administration and its chaos inducing tariffs, the initial reaction from the Governor’s team is sure take more solid form as more becomes known about what Trump really is up to and wants to see done.

It is worth noting the movie tariff firestorm from the low polling Trump came the same night he also exclaimed that he wanted to  “rebuild and open” Alcatraz Federal Penitentiary to house “Serial Offenders who spread filth, bloodshed, and mayhem on our streets.”

Accordingly, this new tariff policy seems to be connected somewhat to conversations Jon Voight, one of Trump’s trio of special ambassadors” to Hollywood, has been having with guilds and studio/streamer executives in recent weeks. At the same time, industry sources also believe seems it is also a reaction to a China Film Administration unveiled decision in April to “moderately reduce the number of American films imported” as part of a pushback against the 145% tariffs Trump imposed on the PRC.

Regardless, how any tariffs on non-domestic produced film would play out is unknown at this early stage. Would consumers pay the results as a de facto tax with increased ticket prices and streaming subscriptions? Would budgets be the baseline of any evaluation? One theory circulating in DC and LA circles tonight is that any tariffs would be on any financial incentives films and possibly shows received from the likes of Canadian provinces and the Hollywood North of Vancouver, the UK, Australia, Viktor Orbán’s Hungary, Germany, Mexico and others.

Tonight, studio in-house counsel and top tier outside firms are said to be scrambling to find out what Trump really wants and what it will cost them,” I’m told. “He always wants a deal, a win, we have to hit the right note Monday,” an exec who has been working the phones, texts and DMs told me. With studios and streamers officially pushing any request for comment over to the MPA, the industry lobbying group has said nothing publicly so far.

One certainty is that if Trump’s movie tariff is real, it will prove another blow to an already greatly weakened industry.

An industry that only recently has seen some degree of recovery from the downturns of the pandemic and the shift to in-home viewing via streaming, with Netflix, Max and to some extent Disney having heavy international inventories. Add to that, even as the big increase in the California Film Commission administered tax credits moves through the state legislature, with 2023’s strikes, devastating wildfires and high costs battering LA, there has been a dramatic double digit drop in production in and around the City of Angels over the past six years. A harsh drop in a now belt tightening economy that has left scores of below-the-line workers unemployed month after month, with increasing numbers leaving the state and/or the industry all together.

As one insider put it Sunday of Trump’s new tariffs threats: “I didn’t have destroy the entire film industry worldwide on my bingo card this year.”

To that, Trump has invoked the 1977 created legislation repeatedly over the last three months in his sprawling and erratic tariffs moves since taking office again Still, the IEEPA is actually quite precise in the need for an “unusual and extraordinary threat” to be identified for a national emergency to be called. Additionally, to Newsom’s office’s point, with all the sanctions power the IEEPA affords a POTUS, the term “tariffs” are not among them. With that, there is little the GOP dominated Congress can or would do to reign Trump in on this abuse of the Act without a veto proof bill shutting down his initiative.

Which, as a fuller sense of what Trump actually means by a 100% tariff on movies produced in other nations takes shape and will it include television, looks like this will be heading for the courts. Before then it will be the stock market that offers the first reaction in the morning – and that could set a very bleak stage.

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