Letters to the Editor: Hollywood needs incentives, not tariffs, to bring filmmaking back to the U.S.

To the editor: The film business is suffering for many reasons, but tariffs would make it worse (“Trump announces 100% tariffs on movies made overseas, surprising studios,” May 4). Incentives are what the film industry needs. Films are shot where the location is called for in the script and where there are incentives to make it cost effective.

President Trump’s kind of reckless decision-making is the hallmark of his administration — he has uninformed bootlickers making policy they don’t understand. Instead of consulting in a responsible manner with the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, studios and independent filmmakers, Trump appointed actors Jon Voight, Mel Gibson and Sylvester Stallone as his “special ambassadors” to Hollywood. He said these three would help bring back Hollywood business lost to foreign countries. The results speak for themselves.

Lisa Kaas Boyle, Santa Monica

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To the editor: The scariest thing about Trump’s proposed film tariff is its possible purpose as censorship of viewpoints from outside the U.S. As his hold on domestic media continues to escalate through punitive lawsuits and while deportations continue, our access to alternate viewpoints becomes all the more important.

David Lutness, Valencia

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To the editor: Trump says that films made overseas will be tariffed, which would probably mean filmmakers cannot take their hard drives overseas and come back with digital sequencing that constitutes a movie without being taxed. Should we stop there? What about other artists and writers? Shouldn’t we be examining sketch pads and journals at customs for drawings and sentences that may have been composed overseas? What about philosophers and thinkers who travel? Perhaps we can scan their brains coming and going to quantify what overseas ideating should be tariffed.

I rewatched “Judgment at Nuremberg,” much of which was filmed in Germany, last night (without a foreign film surcharge). It’s a fascinating study on how commonplace people accepted or ignored the markedly uncommon that was happening around them.

Robert Fox, Los Angeles