Trump film tariffs: ‘Worst thing’ people can do is panic, says producer

The “worst thing” anyone in the film industry can do is panic about US president Donald Trump‘s warning about a 100 per cent tariff on non-US films, award-winning producer David Puttnam has said.

“I think the problem is we’re giving an extraordinary amount of credibility to an entirely ignorant tweet,” he told RTÉ radio’s Today with Claire Byrne show. Mr Puttnam said that in “four out of five, five out of six of the big policy statements he’s made, he’s retreated from. “The biggest issue was the uncertainty caused by president Trump’s comments.

Mr Puttnam said the president’s threat as “incredibly ignorant because it’s a very, very, very complicated business.

“You’ve got to remember that, first of all, only 28 per cent of revenues are generated back in America. So it’s 72 per cent of all the money that movies make is made outside the United States.

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Mr Puttnam said there was a reason why some TV series were made outside the US because audiences wanted to see such locations.”

[ Trump film tariffs could hit thousands of jobs in Ireland, industry figures warnOpens in new window ]

“This is a stupid move. It will undoubtedly, I think, blow up in his face, pretty well everything blows up in his face, but he’s gonna cause far more chaos than he’ll solve. He’ll bring a few jobs back to the United States, but I promise you, every American involved in making and distributing movies today is very, very worried. They’re not sitting there thinking, oh great, this is a bonanza for America. It ain’t.

“We may start to have to go back to making films for relatively inexpensive sums of money but that’s a creative challenge and it’s also a creative opportunity. You’ll be interviewing people two or three, four years from now who have made very good films as a direct result of Donald Trump’s plundering.

The co-chief executive of Element Films, Ed Guiney has also expressed concern and confusion Mr Trump’s tariff comments.

“Honestly, we’re all scratching our heads. I mean it was very disconcerting to wake up to that bombshell yesterday morning ... I suppose since then, as is often the case with Trump, things have moderated and changed. And now the White House are making more, I won’t say positive, but they’re kind of qualifying the statement, I suppose,” he told RTÉ radio’s Morning Ireland.

[ Trump orders 100% tariff on foreign-made movies to save ‘dying’ HollywoodOpens in new window ]

“But it’s really hard to understand how a tariff would be imposed because so much of the activity that happens in the world is actually owned by American studios. These things are services, they’re not products in the way that you know you traditionally imagine tariffs being imposed on a product.

“I think behind it, there is definitely an anxiety in the States in that there is a lot of what they call runaway production. In other words, American film and television production that shoots all around the world. And actually, we benefit from it hugely here in Ireland.

“As is well known, we have an amazing crew base here and we’ve very decent incentives and a very buoyant industry. And same with the UK and Canada. But I think there is a feeling that a lot of American stuff should be shooting in the US, but actually that’s largely down to the cost base in the States, which is very high, and also the incentives. And there are incentives in some of the states of America. So I think the other thing that’s emerging in this is a conversation around whether there should be a federal tax incentive in America to keep American production at home.”