The Teamsters are celebrating President Donald Trump’s idea to impose tariffs on films produced abroad, calling it a “strong step” toward “reining in the studios’ un-American addiction to outsourcing our members’ work.”
The statement from International Brotherhood of Teamsters general president Sean O’Brien and motion picture division director and Hollywood Teamsters leader Lindsay Dougherty came one day after Trump posted on Truth Social that he wanted to apply a “100% tariff” on “any and all Movies coming into our Country that are produced in Foreign Lands.”
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The union leaders frame Trump’s idea as a pro-labor step that would benefit American production workers whose livelihoods have been jeopardized by accelerated offshoring of entertainment work. “These gigantic corporations line their pockets by recklessly cutting corners, abandoning American crews and exploiting tax loopholes abroad. While these companies get rich fleeing to other countries and gaming the system, our members have gotten screwed over,” their statement read.
“If studios want to benefit from American box offices, they must invest in American workers. We thank President Trump for boldly supporting good union jobs when others have turned their heads.”
The Teamsters’ statement represents the most positive Hollywood union reaction yet to Trump’s idea, the details of which have not been ironed out. On Monday, the White House stated that “no final decisions” have been made about the tariffs as questions have emerged about how a tariff like this could be executed and which projects it would apply to.
But it’s no major surprise that the Teamsters would be in favor. Unlike some other major American labor leaders, O’Brien has consistently sought to engage with the Trump administration. The groundwork for that relationship was laid when his union met with Trump during his 2024 presidential candidacy and broke with a decades-long precedent of endorsing Democratic presidential candidates by declining to endorse at all that year. O’Brien spoke at the Republican National Convention in July, becoming the first Teamsters president to do so.
Now, O’Brien speaks with the president “three to four times a month,” as he recently told the Boston Herald. The Teamsters have brought entertainment labor issues to the fore in the meantime, with O’Brien and Dougherty meeting with FCC chair Brendan Carr to discuss potential labor issues in the Paramount-Skydance merger and with O’Brien discussing film tax credits with Texas Gov. Greg Abbott.
The union has also been one of several making concerted efforts to return more production work to California as shoots in the state have plunged.
“The Teamsters applaud any elected official — Republican, Democrat, Independent — who’s willing to fight for American workers,” O’Brien and Dougherty’s statement read. “We look forward to continuing to work with the administration to build a trade agenda that benefits our members and workers throughout the American motion picture and TV industry.”
