US President Donald Trump’s threat to impose a 100 per cent tariff on foreign films has raised alarm in India’s industry from Bollywood to Tollywood, even as it is struggling to lure audiences back to cinemas and facing shrinking revenues from online platforms, according to analysts.
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In a social media post on Tuesday, echoing a similar threat in May, Trump alleged that Hollywood had been “stolen’’ from the US and declared: “I will be imposing a 100 per cent tariff on any and all movies that are made outside the United States.”
Speaking to The Hindu newspaper, Ashish Kulkarni, an Indian production house founder who is also an animation and visual effects expert, said: “Under such a high tariff regime, all channels of movie showing and viewing will be impacted and become more costly. It will overall increase the cost of content consumption for the Indian diaspora.”
In an interview with NDTV, Hindi filmmaker Kabir Khan expressed shock over Trump’s announcement, saying: “I have no idea what he means when he says ‘made outside of the United States’ because every second Hollywood film is shot outside the USA, and the VFX [visual effects] is executed outside the USA.”
Trump’s comments signal his intention to extend his protectionist trade agenda to the entertainment sector, even though it is unclear how this tariff would be imposed, as most films are distributed digitally, analysts say.
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Karan Taurani, executive vice-president and media sector analyst at Elara Capital, a London-based investment bank and brokerage firm, estimated the Indian film industry earned about 10 per cent of its annual box office revenue from overseas, of which the US accounted for a third.