American President Donald Trump’s offensive tariff war is going to impact Indian film industry as he plans to impose 100% duty on movies made outside USA. Telugu films will be the most affected with this imposition because USA contributes a major source of revenues earned from Overseas territory. While trade circles await complete structure of tariffs to be borne by buyers to assess the impact, leading Telugu producer and distributor TG Vishwa Prasad reacted on how Trump’s decision will cost Tollywood.

In his latest interview, the Seattle based People Media Factory head stated that it is unclear how Trump’s tariffs, which are specifically customs duties imposed on physical items imported into the USA from foreign countries at their border, will have an impact on movies which are routed only through online content and have no connection with the border. He added that we have to wait till the resolution is passed to get a clear picture on the tariff structure. He also opined that US government alone cannot unilaterally impose duties on ticket sales and revenues due to its federal state of constitution.

Vishwa Prasad further elaborated that the government will need to tweak its customs norms to impose duties on films and this involves a lot of modalities and other factors. He also added that the ticket prices cannot be hiked due to these tariffs because the footfalls will plunge bigtime if prices are revised. Talking about the impact on OTT platforms with these tariffs, he said that the imposition on movies will subsequently have an impact on OTT content as well.

Vishwa Prasad is optimistic that the 100% tariff on movies will take a lot of time and needs to pass judicial scrutiny before taking affect.