While attending the inaugural Doha Film Festival, veteran U.S. film producer Steven Paul said President Donald Trump’s plan to impose 100% tariffs on films made outside the U.S is unlikely to materialize.
Paul, who is a special advisor to Jon Voight – who, in turn, is one of three “special ambassadors” to Trump on Hollywood – said “it’s very difficult to tariff the entertainment business and I don’t think it would be good if there were tariffs on the entertainment business.”
Paul delivered a masterclass at the Industry Days at Doha and took the opportunity to weigh in on Trump’s tariffs threats which he’s made twice; once in May and once in September, sending ripples of shock and disbelief across the international film industry.
“I am hopeful that we won’t be going down that path, but we will introduce coproductions and tax credits and all of that, because I also don’t want us only filming in the United States. I want there to be treaties so that we can do things like I’m saying between Doha and America,” added Paul, who is CEO of SP Media Group.
Paul went on to explain how the tariffs controversy was sparked. “We went around all of Hollywood: the idea was, there weren’t enough films being made in the U.S.,” he said. “Productions have been going everywhere in the world, England, Australia, Bulgaria. There’s a series of reasons for that; one is it’s very expensive to film in the United States. The other thing is there are great tax incentives when you go overseas.
“We haven’t really been having that in the United States. We’ve been looking at how to make the American industry healthy again – or great again. We’ve come up with a plan, which we then submitted to the president. We met with every streamer, the studios, every union. We put together a coalition,” he added.
“We came up with a laundry list, a wish-list: there was tax credits in America; there was co-production ideas; there is write-offs for individuals, infrastructure ideas,” Paul continued.
Paul recounted that during a meeting with Trump in his Mar-a-Lago, Florida, home “We gave the whole list to the president. We’re sitting there in Mar-a-Lago. And one of the things that he liked, 20 pages in, was the word ‘tariffs.’ That got a lot of news. It’s been crazy.”
