US President Donald Trump speaks to the press in the Oval Office of the White House in Washington, DC, on March 13, 2025. Mandel Ngan, AFP

President Donald Trump said Sunday he was ordering new tariffs on all films made outside the United States, claiming Hollywood was being "devastated" by a trend of US filmmakers and studios working abroad.

The announcement comes as the White House is coming under mounting criticism over its aggressive trade policies that have seen Trump impose sweeping tariffs on countries around the globe.

"I am 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," he wrote on his Truth Social platform.

Trump's post comes after China, which has taken the brunt of the US president's combative trade policies with 145 percent tariffs on many goods, said last month it would reduce the number of US films it imported.

"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," Trump wrote Sunday.

"Hollywood, and many other areas within the U.S.A., are being devastated," he added, claiming this amounted to a national security threat.

Trump tariffs provoke growing economic uncertainty

The implications for the movie industry -- or how exactly the tariffs would be enacted -- were not immediately clear.

There was also no mention in Trump's post of television series -- an increasingly popular and profitable sector of production for the screen.

© Agence France-Presse