Spike Lee says ‘people are hurting’ in jab at Trump’s foreign-made film tariffs

Spike Lee not-so-subtly shaded Donald Trump while speaking at the 2025 Cannes Film Festival ahead of the world premiere of his new film, Highest 2 Lowest.

During Monday’s press conference, the acclaimed Do the Right Thing director, 68, was asked if social media has negatively impacted American morals.

In a clip of the moment shared to social media, Lee replied with an impish grin: “Well, I don’t know how much we can talk about American values considering who is the president.”

“My wife said, ‘Spike, be very careful what you say!’” he laughed, per Variety. “But here’s the thing, I don’t think we can condemn social media. People say the same thing about film or whatever. So I’m not going to demonize the form.”

Lee was later asked more directly about Trump’s plan to impose 100 percent tariffs on foreign-made films. While Lee admitted that he “doesn’t have the answer for that,” he noted that “people are definitely hurting.”

“No one’s working,” the BlacKkKlansman director said. “The guy just said he wanted to put a tariff on every film that shot… I don’t know how that’s going to work.”

Trump’s push for tariffs on foreign-made films began earlier this month with a Truth Social post, in which he claimed other countries were "offering all sorts of incentives to draw our filmmakers and studios away from the United States” which was, in turn, “devastating” Hollywood.

The president then authorized the Department of Commerce and the United States Trade Representative "to immediately begin the process of instituting a 100% Tariff on any and all Movies coming into our Country that are produced in Foreign Lands."

Shortly after that initial Truth Social post, White House officials clarified that “no final decisions” had been made and that all options were being explored.

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Trump then spoke out again, stating: "I’m not looking to hurt the industry; I'm looking to help.”

It remains unclear if or when said tariffs would take effect.

But Lee wasn’t the only director to have spoken out against the president’s proposed tariffs at this year’s film festival.

Over the weekend, director Richard Linklater, who was there with his new movie, Nouvelle Vague, defiantly addressed Trump’s plans, saying: “The tariff thing, that’s not gonna happen right? That guy changes his mind like 50 times in one day.

“It’s the one export industry in the U.S., it would be kind of dumb to… Whatever, we don’t have to talk about that.”

Wes Anderson also mocked Trump’s threats, saying Monday that he’d “never heard of a 100 percent tariff before.”

“I’m not an expert in that area of economics, but I feel that means he’s saying he’s going to take all the money. And then what do we get? So it’s complicated to me,” he said, quipping: “Does that mean you can hold up the movie in customs? I feel it doesn’t ship that way. I’m not sure I want to know the details so I’ll hold off on my official answer.”

Meanwhile, Lee’s new movie, Highest 2 Lowest, starring his longtime collaborator Denzel Washington and rapper A$AP Rocky, premiered on Monday.

The movie, which follows a music mogul who faces a life-and-death moral dilemma when he gets involved in a ransom plot, has already divided critics.

The Independent’s Geoffrey Macnab called it “generic,” arguing that it is “short on emotional depth” in a three-star review. Meanwhile, Roger Ebert’s Robert Daniels hailed it as “an exceptional piece of personal filmmaking that might be Lee’s most energetic film since Inside Man.”