logo
Trump's 100% tariffs on foreign films: Which recent blockbusters could have been affected — From 'Avatar' to 'Wicked'

Trump's 100% tariffs on foreign films: Which recent blockbusters could have been affected — From 'Avatar' to 'Wicked'

Economic Times05-05-2025

US President Donald Trump's weekend announcement about maximum tariffs planned for all movies made outside his country has sparked concerns within and beyond the entertainment industry. The 100 per cent levy reflects the leader's nearly undeterred stance in the face of growing concerns around the international trade war that his economic policies have sparked in the months following his second presidency.
A clear picture of how the tariffs would be implemented was missing from the president's declaration. On Monday, a day after Trump made the announcement, the White House said that the government is yet to make a final decision regarding tariffs on films produced overseas.It, however, added that all possible options are being explored to safeguard the "national and economic security" of the US, according to news agency Reuters. Notably, while announcing his plans, Trump had billed the growing trend of foreign film production as a "national security threat".
Also Read : When and why did Alcatraz Prison close — and what makes Trump's plan to reopen it so challenging?
On Tuesday, Forbes compiled a list of some of this decade's highest grossers that, though, were American-made but filmed in foreign countries. These films could have potentially faced a big impact if they were covered by the tariffs planned by Trump. Here are some of the films from the list:
1. Avatar: The Way of Water, which was released in 2022, was filmed in New Zealand. It grossed $2.3 billion worldwide. The film was produced by James Cameron's Lightstorm Entertainment, which is based in the US.
2. Barbie, which hit the theatres in 2023, earned a global gross revenue of $1.4 billion. It was filmed in the UK. The movie's producers include US firms Mattel and LuckyChap Entertainment.
3. Deadpool & Wolverine was shot in the UK. The film grossed $1.3 billion globally. The producers of the blockbuster are Marvel Studios, 21 Laps Entertainment, and Maximum Effort -- all US companies, Forbes noted.
4. Jurassic World Dominion, which was released in 2022, managed to earn gross revenues totaling $1 billion. The film was shot in locations spread throughout Canada, Malta, and the UK. All three production companies involved in the making of the movie are US-based.
5. Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, another Marvel movie, was shot in the UK. Its global gross revenue stood at $955.8 million.
Also Read : Why is Trent Alexander-Arnold leaving Liverpool and planning to join Real Madrid?
What has the White House said about Trump's planned movie tariffs?
The White House on Monday said that any conclusive decision on President Donald Trump's planned levies on films produced outside the US has not been finalised yet.
How much tariff does Donald Trump plan to impose on movies filmed outside the US?
He plans to impose a 100 per cent tariff on such films.
Disclaimer Statement: This content is authored by a 3rd party. The views expressed here are that of the respective authors/ entities and do not represent the views of Economic Times (ET). ET does not guarantee, vouch for or endorse any of its contents nor is responsible for them in any manner whatsoever. Please take all steps necessary to ascertain that any information and content provided is correct, updated, and verified. ET hereby disclaims any and all warranties, express or implied, relating to the report and any content therein.

Orange background

Try Our AI Features

Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:

Comments

No comments yet...

Related Articles

Iran says spies acquired big haul of 'sensitive' Israeli nuclear files
Iran says spies acquired big haul of 'sensitive' Israeli nuclear files

First Post

time29 minutes ago

  • First Post

Iran says spies acquired big haul of 'sensitive' Israeli nuclear files

Iran has claimed it has obtained a large cache of sensitive Israeli documents, including files related to Israel's nuclear programme, through a cyberattack on an Israeli nuclear facility. The revelation comes amid renewed tensions over Iran's own nuclear ambitions. read more US intel suggests Israel preparing for possible strike on Iran's nuclear facilities: Report. Image: Reuters Iran's state media claimed on Saturday that its intelligence agencies have obtained a large number of sensitive Israeli documents, including some related to Israel's nuclear plans and facilities, according to Reuters, citing sources. The report said the documents were taken during a cyberattack on an Israeli nuclear research centre last year. Iran is choosing to reveal this now amid rising tensions over its own nuclear programme. 'Although the operation to obtain the documents took place some time ago, the large volume of materials and the need to safely transfer them into Iran required a news blackout to ensure their secure arrival,' state-run PressTV reported, quoting unnamed sources. STORY CONTINUES BELOW THIS AD The sources also said the collection is so vast that reviewing the documents, images, and videos has taken a significant amount of time, PressTV added, without sharing specific details. In 2018, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu claimed Israeli agents had seized a large archive of Iranian documents, showing that Iran had done more nuclear work than previously known. Former US President Donald Trump had threatened to bomb Iran if it didn't agree to a nuclear deal with Washington. However, reports say that in April, Trump blocked an Israeli plan to strike Iranian nuclear sites, preferring to seek a diplomatic agreement. Meanwhile, Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said on Wednesday that halting uranium enrichment would go '100 per cent against' the country's interests, rejecting a key US demand in the ongoing nuclear talks.

Why Harvard is easier to crack than IITs or IIMs for Indian students
Why Harvard is easier to crack than IITs or IIMs for Indian students

Time of India

time29 minutes ago

  • Time of India

Why Harvard is easier to crack than IITs or IIMs for Indian students

U.S. President Donald Trump has halted funding to universities it disagrees with ideologically and temporarily suspended visa interviews required for foreign students planning to enroll this year. This move directly impacts Indian students, who make up nearly one-third of all international students in the United States, as per The Economist report. India has been losing academic talent to America for decades. At the famed Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs), over 60% of the top 100 performers migrate abroad, mostly for America. ALSO READ: Harvard University scores legal win against Trump's international student ban (Join our ETNRI WhatsApp channel for all the latest updates) The Economist report says that Trump's policies might cause Indian students' applications to American universities to plummet by a quarter from this year to the next. Live Events Easier to get into Harvard India is home to half the world's university-age population. On paper, India's top universities have a lot to offer. But getting into them is much harder—some accept as few as 0.2% of applicants, compared to 3–9% for Ivy League schools like Harvard , as per The Economist. Meanwhile, after Trump's stark steps, many parents who had been set on sending their children to the US are rethinking their plans. ALSO READ: Harvard vs Trump: As fresh salvos are fired, international students live in anxiety and fear Looking for options Indian students primarily went to the US to study STEM subjects – science, technology, engineering and maths – and so the focus had shifted to other countries strong in these areas, Piyush Bhartiya, a co-founder of the educational technology company AdmitKard told the Guardian. 'Germany is the main country where students are shifting to for Stem subjects,' he said. 'Other countries like Ireland, France, the Netherlands, which are also gaining substantial interest in the students. At the undergraduate level, the Middle East has also seen a lot of gain in interest given parents feel that it is close by and safer and given the current political environment they may want their kids closer to the home.' ALSO READ: Trump's birthright citizenship order to face first US appeals court review What is happening at Harvard? Harvard University has sued the Trump administration to preserve its ability to enroll international students and restore draconian cuts in research money, two matters that threaten the core functions of the centuries-old institution. The same federal judge in Massachusetts, Allison Burroughs, an appointee of President Barack Obama, is presiding over both cases. She has often sided with Harvard, including on Thursday when she issued a temporary restraining order against the administration's latest move to bar international students. On both fronts, the Trump administration has said that it is punishing Harvard because it has failed to keep Jewish students safe by allowing antisemitism to flourish. It has added on to these accusations as the court fights have drawn on, saying that the university has used racial preferences in admissions in defiance of a Supreme Court ruling and that it has broken rules related to foreign gifts. Harvard has denied the accusations. It says the administration is ignoring its efforts to protect the civil rights of its Jewish students, for example. And Harvard has argued that the federal government has violated its First Amendment rights and has ignored due process as it pursues its vendetta against the university.

Srinagar train was decades in the making. It's set to transform security, trade, identity
Srinagar train was decades in the making. It's set to transform security, trade, identity

The Print

time32 minutes ago

  • The Print

Srinagar train was decades in the making. It's set to transform security, trade, identity

From Jammu through Chenani and then over the windswept, 2,382-metre Banihall Pass, Forbes, Forbes, Campbell & Co.'s engineers proposed a 150-kilometre ropeway to haul timber and iron, live animals, fruits, and vegetables. Linked to a railway line running from Srinagar to Shahabad in south Kashmir's Dooru, the project would connect Kashmir's agrarian markets to the industrial powerhouses of India. And yet, those single-spaced pages were precisely that, a proposal to create the impossible from iron and rock. The neat-blue typewritten manuscript from Forbes, Forbes, Campbell & Co. of Karachi arrived on the desk of Maharaja Pratap Singh of Kashmir, proposing an improbable adventure. The oldest corporate conglomerate in India, the grandees at Forbes were practical men, not given to allowing their imaginations excessive rein. Their company had grown cotton in Lyallpur, built railway lines that cut through Sindh and Mirpur, operated fleets out of Manchester, and served as bankers to the imperial government of Bombay, which later became the State Bank of India. Fantasies were not among their many lines of business. Like so many impossible ideas, that dream was realised last week when the first train linking Katra with Srinagar traversed the Chenab Bridge, hanging 359 metres over raging waters below—the result of seventeen years of work led by the Indian Institute of Science engineering professor G Madhavi Latha—and then headed through the brand-new Banihal Tunnel. Geography, the engineers of the age of industry at Forbes, Forbes and Campbell had, however, taught Kashmir's rulers, is not a fait-accompli. Train lines, roads, tunnels and rivers can all be transformed through technology to build new relationships between peoples and economies. From 1921 onward, Maharaja Pratap Singh, Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru, his successors HD Deve Gowda, Inder Kumar Gujral, Atal Bihari Vajpayee, and Manmohan Singh all contributed to the transformation of the geographic relationship Kashmir has with the rest of India—culminating in the triumph that Prime Minister Narendra Modi has now presided over. Also read: Not a seat left vacant as J&K's all-new Vande Bharat makes first journey from Katra to Srinagar A turn to roads For most of the nineteenth century, the fastest way from Srinagar to Delhi was a rutted cart road over the Banihal Pass. 'This route is reserved by HH Maharaja of Jammu and Kashmir, and no visitor can travel this way without his express permission,' sourly recorded Pratap Singh's advisor, Major-General Roul, the Marquis of Bourbel. 'When the letter is given, the traveller should arrange for the through transport of his camp and baggage from Jammu to Islamabad [Anantnag] otherwise much trouble and difficulty may be felt, the local coolies frequently putting down their loads on the roadside and running away.' This ought to have been no surprise, of course: The labourers were slaves, forced to labour for the crown for parts of the year. A number of ambitious railway projects were brought to the table in the late nineteenth century, but without success. SR Scott Stratten & Co. proposed, in 1898, to conduct surveys and execute the project. Engineer DA Adams proposed electric engines, but it was thought infeasible because of the elevations he proposed to traverse. In 1902, WJ Weightman suggested building a railway line along the Jhelum River. The First World War, though, put an end to these explorations. For the most part, passengers and goods from the Kashmir Valley used the metalled and well-bridged road running through Pattan and Baramulla and through Kohala to the town of Jhelum in northern Punjab. The route was designed and delivered by Charles Spedding and his company Spedding & Co., who also built a road through the mountains linking Srinagar to the monarchy's furthest outpost in Gilgit. The Baramulla-Jhelum road, American explorer Ellsworth Huntington reported in 1906, was the only one capable of bearing wheeled traffic. 'The roads are terrible,' Huntington complained, 'and as outside traffic is largely shut out by the mountains, beasts of burden are rare, wheeled vehicles are practically confined to the single new thoroughfare down the Jhelum, and traffic is carried on in boats, the loads being usually carried for short distances on men's backs.' Why was this so? Through earlier centuries, historian Parvez Ahmad writes, Kashmir's trade relations focussed on markets in Central Asia, such as Samarkand, Kashgar, Bukhara, Khurasan and Yarkand. The Mughal invasion of 1586 led to the formation of linkages between Kashmiri traders and markets in the plains of Punjab and beyond. The brief period of Afghan rule, from 1753 to 1819, saw this trade collapse. However, the rise of the Dogra monarchy in 1819 led to further evolution in trade with the plains. Led by the Kashmiri Pandit Laxman Joo Tickoo, the first qualified engineer in the state, the Maharaja also decided to develop the Banihal Cart Road as a commercial axis. The project included a tunnel at Banihal, which reduced some of the road's worst vulnerabilities to weather and made it possible for trucks to cross the pass into Jammu and on to Pathankot. There is no evidence in the historical record that the Maharaja had strategic considerations on his mind, but the Dogra state now had a second, fateful highway curling through its territories. The expansion of road and rail projects needed money, and the monarchy didn't have it. The revenues of Rs 27.7 million in 1939 had a substantial amount of Rs 4 million deducted by the Maharaja and his private departments. Another Rs 5 million was spent on what was to prove a woefully underequipped army. Little was left for infrastructure. In 1947, the Maharaja's successor, Hari Singh, fled Srinagar as his army collapsed in the face of an invasion by Pakistani irregulars. Indian troops were able to use this road to support Indian Army special forces who had been airdropped to save the state. A blueprint for freedom From the 1930s, the economist and political activist Prithvi Nath Dhar—later to head Prime Minister Indira Gandhi's secretariat—had begun to think through what Kashmir's accession to India might look like. The one possible rail line, he wrote in a 1951 note, would have been through Banihal, as the Forbes, Forbes, Campbell & Co. report had made clear. 'Thus, if Kashmir develops her railway communications, a much closer integration with India will be possible, and her comparative isolation, brought about by the high mountain ranges of the Himalayas, broken.' The technology and resources of the time, though, meant a project of this kind just wasn't feasible. The Government focussed, instead, on boring a new tunnel to replace Laxman Joo's old one, and work was completed in 1956. The Army also invested in upgrading the cart road to one that met the needs of the giant logistical chain leading up to what was then called the Ceasefire Line. Even more important, though, was Dhar's revelation that the severance of trade links with Panjab would have few consequences—if alternative routes were available. Trade with Panjab, through hubs like Lahore, rose both in volume and value from Rs 40,442 in 1900-01 to Rs 1,53,35,877 in 1925-26. This was mainly composed of finished cotton, dyes, gunny bags, liquor, metals, oils, grain, tea, and tobacco. To Punjab, Kashmir sent live animals, timber, herbal drugs, fruits, vegetables, pulses, hides and skins, as well as opium and charas—then traded legally. For Dhar, it seemed that the agricultural economy of Kashmir and the industrial economy of India complemented each other perfectly. Much of what Kashmir needed was just being routed through Punjab, not made there. Linking Kashmir to the broader Indian market would yield substantial profits for its farmers. All that was needed was a secure logistical system. Kashmir had to be related to India with iron and concrete, not soldiers and bullets. Also read: India needs to focus on winning in Kashmir, not fighting Pakistan The final push The idea of a railroad, though, never quite went away. In this, there was remarkable strategic coherence that cut across successive governments. Prime Minister Deve Gowda laid a foundation stone for the railway line in 1996, at a time when it seemed impossible to assemble workers and protect them from assault. A year later, Prime Minister IK Gujral laid another foundation stone. In 2002, the project was declared one of national importance, freeing it from the limitations of the railway's budget. The big impacts of the railway line, when it is fully functional, will be visible in cities across India: Fruit will be transported far more cheaply and efficiently, the movement of ghee and spices like saffron will be better organised, and new Kashmiri products like high-end cheese will find markets. Less noticed, the compression of space will bring about profound cultural changes. The new train will enable easy day trips between Kashmir and Jammu, two cities divided not only by religion, ethnicity, and culture but also by the bitter history of Partition and the Pir Panjal Mountain range. The impact of this cultural change ought not to be underestimated—because we know that's just what happened earlier. Travelling on the new highway their father had built, Laxman Joo Tickoo's sons went to Mumbai to learn engineering. They discovered new ideas instead. Lambodar Nath Tickoo, the eldest son, decided to become a tailor and set up a high-end bespoke business in Srinagar. Local Pandit conservatives derided the young rebel for engaging in work below his caste status—but the profits from Navyug Tailors soon silenced the critics. Kashmir's railway story reveals essential aspects of what India has achieved in the state, which often receives insufficient attention. Instead of developing its rail network, Pakistan currently lacks a single electrified line, which reduces the efficiency of its system. Large numbers of railway stations in the country's North-West have simply been abandoned. Islamabad also failed to push through a railway line to Kandahar and the north, which would have enabled it to dominate trade in parts of Central Asia. The war India really needs to win is to make Kashmir's people secure, prosperous partners in the project of India. To this end, each journey on the new train will bring us just a little closer. Praveen Swami is contributing editor at ThePrint. His X handle is @praveenswami. Views are personal. (Edited by Theres Sudeep)

DOWNLOAD THE APP

Get Started Now: Download the App

Ready to dive into the world of global news and events? Download our app today from your preferred app store and start exploring.
app-storeplay-store