Lights, camera, no action: Manitoba film industry concerned about U.S. tariffs

A new tariff threat on international film production by U.S. president Donald Trump could impact Manitoba’s film industry. Danton Unger explains.

Manitoba is bracing for the possible impact of American-imposed tariffs on the movie industry.

Film crews were hard at work turning a St. Boniface street into a magical New York Christmas. It’s the latest hallmark movie shot in Winnipeg but the film’s producer, Ian Dimerman, worries all this could soon be put at risk.

“For the sake of all these local actors and all these local technicians that we employ that make a living doing this, I really hope that this truly is just a bad, bad nightmare,” the Inferno Pictures president said on set.

Claiming Hollywood and other U.S. areas are being devastated by incentives drawing filmmakers away from the states, President Donald Trump made a post on social media Sunday. He said he was authorizing his government “to immediately begin the process of instituting a 100 per cent tariff on any and all movies produced in foreign lands.”

Dimerman said such a tariff would have far-reaching effects here in Manitoba going beyond just the film industry.

“It’s a trickle-down effect, right? We’re not renting rooms, we’re not renting cars, we’re not renting trucks. It will impact all of the vendors that we work with,” he said. “It would be pretty painful. You’d see tens of thousands of jobs in this country alone evaporate.”

In Manitoba, the film industry rakes in hundreds of millions of dollars every year with provincial tax credits catching the spotlight of several big-budget productions from the U.S.

“It adds tonnes of value to our GDP and so this is one of the things that we need to stand up for, in terms of protecting Manitoba jobs and protecting Manitoba economy,” Wab Kinew, Manitoba’s premier, said Monday.

Dimerman hoped Trump reconsiders as the future of movies like his could depend on it.

“You could see a dramatic reduction in the amount of content that we have come to enjoy,” Dimerman said.

Manitoba Film and Music declined an interview, but tells CTV News in a statement it is too early to determine the impact of Trump’s tariff threat, but noted it is monitoring the situation closely.