Trump film tariff proves Scottish film cannot sell out to Hollywood

The Herald Scotland

08-05-2025

In layman's terms, the Scottish Government aimed to offer enticing tax reliefs and accommodating terms to attract Hollywood studios – following local economic boosts from major productions like Fast & Furious 9 in Edinburgh and the then-upcoming Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny in Glasgow.
This aligns with an increasing trend in Hollywood production, where filming in Los Angeles and across California has declined by a third over the past decade, shifting instead to international locations. Rising labour costs – exacerbated by recent strikes – and more favourable terms abroad have progressively deterred studios from filming in their own backyard.
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Scotland has been one of the countries capitalising on this shift. However, that opportunity may now be abruptly ending, with President Donald Trump announcing that all films produced in 'foreign lands' will face a 100% tariff.
'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 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!' the President declared on his social media platform, Truth Social.
Cue panic. This would destroy Scotland's recent trajectory of positioning itself as a production hub – a Hollywood satellite state – in an effort to boost tourism and economic opportunities. Such a decision makes Scottish film fall on its sword, rather than building and developing less lucrative but more culturally meaningful domestic production. It is not just Scotland's problem – England, Ireland, and various European countries also see an existential threat to their film sectors from tracking in the same direction.
Is this tenuous type of arrangement really the direction we want for the arts, though? Trump's erratic behaviour may be a blessing in disguise in that regard. Instead of funding culture that Scotland can call its own, the focus has been on cultural sectors competing as commercial entities, and finding itself out of its depth fairly often.
There is still a chance to recover from the damage and push forward whatever results from such a tariff, but it requires such a mammoth mind shift on what national culture means, what it is supposed to do, how the levers of production are greased, and how Scotland can be enriched without prioritising an economic focus. What worth does the arts have outside of the limited capacity that production and distribution under capitalism can afford? Artless political wonks will be the last ones to understand this question and have the answers, most likely.
When BBC soap opera River City finally got the axe after 23 years, it portrayed an existential threat to Scotland's television sector. But if an industry sees potential collapse because one soap opera has stopped being produced, then it is not much of an industry in the first place. Foundations have not been built correctly, no genuine effort into long-term thinking has occurred, and those who make their living in these sectors are the ones forced to pay in the end.
Within this crisis lies an opportunity. A 100% tariff on foreign productions could force a reckoning: either double down on what is now a failed race to the bottom (competing with other countries for ever-larger incentives) or pivot toward something more resilient and truer to purpose and form. Imagine a Scottish film industry that prioritises domestic voices, invests in sustainable production networks, and treats culture as a public good rather than a magnet for corporate subsidy. Or, imagine this: stop thinking of film and the arts as industries in the first place.
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The question isn't how to survive Trump's tariffs, but why Scotland makes films at all. Is it to mimic Hollywood on a smaller scale, or is it to build an artistic voice – to tell stories, express thoughts and feelings, that couldn't and wouldn't be expressed elsewhere? The answer will determine whether the next decade brings creative stagnation or a genuine cultural revival. The cynic in me might be too apprehensive to see that far into the future.
The full-blown tariff is likely typical Trump bluster, something that will soften or be quietly dropped altogether. He is already stressing the importance of what Hollywood thinks, and how studios can work with such a tariff, and it is a concern raised by Keir Starmer in the recent US-UK trade deal that is now being finalised.
The last thing Trump genuinely wants is for Hollywood to fail; he is a strange byproduct of American Hollywood thinking after all. Trump once wished to be part of the club, despite all the talk of liberal media elites, and that part of him has never truly left. Either way, it has revealed the truly rocky terrain on the horizon for how Scotland perceives and produces the arts, and it shouldn't be the next scare where we finally realise.