Ben Shapiro slams Trump's announcement of tariffs on foreign films: “Very badly calibrated”
Shapiro on Trump's tariff announcement for movies: “We are emptying the term 'national security threat' of pretty much all content.”
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From the May 5, 2025, edition of The Daily Wire's The Ben Shapiro Show
BEN SHAPIRO (HOST): Meanwhile, President Trump today put out an executive order suggesting that he was going to put a 100% tariff on foreign movies. Which — yeah — like, why? Just — why? I'm sorry.
If Hollywood is unable to lower its costs, there is no reason why you shouldn't be able to go elsewhere and produce your movies. All movies and TV shows now — this has been going on for decades — are basically produced outside of Hollywood. Hollywood has emptied itself out, and that has forced them to actually move their own businesses to places like Vancouver in Canada or go to other states like Georgia in order to film or go abroad to Romania or Hungary or wherever else in order to film.
So President Trump thinks that by radically increasing the cost on movie production in a time when streaming is already eating out the profit margins of all of the moviemaking industry, that is a very badly calibrated executive order.
President Trump put up a post on Truth Social. 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 United States. Hollywood and many other areas within The United States are being devastated. This is a concerted effort by other nations and therefore a national security threat.
So you're saying it's a national security threat for Romania to offer a tax incentive to film in Romania. I'm sorry. That is not remotely a national security threat. It may be a threat to Tom Cruise's next paycheck, but that is not a national security threat. If Matthew McConaughey makes less money because films are being made, or a key grip in Hollywood has to travel in order to go film over in Budapest, that is not remotely a national security threat. We are emptying the term "national security threat" of pretty much all content.
He says he was 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. We want movies made in America again.
I — where is the demand for this? Seriously. It's just a sop to the actors union. Right? It's a it's a sop to the writers union and to SAG AFTRA and to the rest of the big Hollywood unions. When he says, in addition to everything else, this creates messaging and propaganda, which is something that he says here.
If you wanna stop the messaging and propaganda, President Trump should go back to actually shutting down TikTok. You wanna end the foreign propaganda? How about the weaponization of social media by TikTok in order to generate support for a bunch of anti American policies? Because that is the thing that is very much happening.