Tariffs on films may end up hurting industry, says Barclays

Some names in the media sector, like Netflix (NFLX), had been seen as defensive due to lack of exposure to tariff-related threats, but headlines about 100% tariffs on foreign-made films are “likely to result in this hypothesis being questioned,” according to Barclay analyst Kannan Venkateshwar. However, there are “literally no details available at this point other than a social media post from President Trump,” so it is not clear how this will be implemented, the analyst noted. If this is deployed on a wide scale, it “may end up harming the very industry it is supposed to help” given that the U.S. exports triple the amount of content that it imports and generates $15B in trade surplus, the analyst added. Publicly traded owners of movie studios include Netflix, Disney (DIS), Comcast (CMCSA), Lionsgate (LGF.A), Paramount (PARA), Sony (SONY) and Warner Bros. Discovery (WBD). Publicly traded companies in the film exhibition space include AMC Entertainment (AMC), Cinemark (CNK), Imax (IMAX), Marcus (MCS) and National CineMedia (NCMI).