Hollywood is bracing as President Trump’s promised (and ever-fluctuating) tariffs threaten to balloon the price of materials required for physical production, from lumber to fabric.
For many in the production space, fears are mounting that the current and threatened tariffs, as well as the unpredictability of the future of global trade, could harm the already-weakened state of domestic film and television set work.
Creatives who spoke to The Hollywood Reporter largely aren’t yet feeling the impacts of the latest developments in import taxes. After Trump announced a baseline tariff on all imported goods with further penalties for about dozens of countries on April 2, he reversed course and now the 10 percent baseline, a 25 percent tariff on certain Canadian and Mexican goods, cars and steel and aluminum imports and a 145 percent tariff on Chinese goods is in effect, for now.
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But some industry types aren’t taking any chances. Construction coordinator Karen Higgins, who has worked on projects like WandaVision and Twin Peaks: The Return, says she and others in her cohort are stockpiling materials. Still, she notes, “You can only store so much lumber.”
Mike Orth, the senior project manager at North Hollywood’s full-service set shop 41 Sets, has been telling customers that if their projects don’t happen soon, prices for his company’s services could go up based on increased materials costs. “Paint suppliers are saying that the tariffs are going to affect them and that we can expect a 30 percent increase on paint materials,” he notes.
While no production department would be spared the brunt of an escalated trade war, the art department would be hit particularly hard given its reliance on raw materials. To construct sets, crew members frequently use lumber that might often be sourced from Canada and Southeast Asia, plywood from Southeast Asia and steel from China.
Tobey Bays, the business agent for property craftspersons’ union IATSE Local 44, thinks there could be a “significant increase” in costs for big builds if tariffs escalate. If that is the case, says Bays, who earlier in his career worked asa leadman for ER and Thirteen, “There might be some artistic decisions that will be made” — like projects opting for simpler builds, more on-location work and more visual effects.
The wardrobe department would also see unique impacts. Productions often source fabrics from all over the world and sometimes import rental costumes from well-known houses in Europe. U.S.-based vendors could also face steeper costs and raise prices: Diana Foster, the president and owner of North Hollywood’s costume rental and manufacturing service United American Costume Co., buys shoes in Mexico and Guatemala, leather and furs in Canada, fabrics in the U.K. and trims from Pakistan and India to service her shop’s specialty of original and reproduction clothing from 1770 to 1970. She also ships costume rentals and purchases across borders to wherever clients’ productions are taking place.
She says any increased costs would have to be passed on to the producers. “You can’t have these independent companies in the motion picture industry who have already tried to recover from COVID, from two union strikes, absorb any more in overhead,” she says. “They just can’t do it.”
In a contractionary industry environment, with the state of the business still delicate, several creatives also express concerns that any additional production costs might supercharge the decades-long trend of productions moving overseas for savings. “I think people are really worried as to how to keep the small number of state-based jobs that are here if we can’t source things [from other countries] cheaply and quickly,” assistant costume designer Shealyn Biron (Ford v Ferrari, Bombshell) says.
“The industry has been hit hard by a confluence of events — COVID, the strikes, the [L.A.] fires, box office being down, people changing their viewing habits,” says director and former studio exec George Huang (Swimming With Sharks), a professor at UCLA’s School of Theater, Film & Television. “I just worry that with everything else taken as a whole, does this become the feather on the hood of a car that’s dangling on the edge of a cliff?”
Which poses the question: Could Trump’s tariffs — implemented for the stated purpose of bringing manufacturing back to the U.S. and persuading Americans to invest in more domestically-produced products — ironically have the opposite effect on American film and television, pushing it ever more overseas?
With Trump adding tariff exemptions on April 11 to iPhones, computers and other electronics, it’s clear that any punitive tariffs could be here today and gone tomorrow. But as Huang points out, this period of total unpredictability arrives as studios are more risk-averse than ever. “The uncertainty economically for everyone is definitely causing a slowdown or just a bit of a pause on everything,” he says. “The studios were skittish before. Now they’re really skittish.”
This story first appeared in the April 16 issue of The Hollywood Reporter magazine. To receive the magazine,click here to subscribe.
