SAG-AFTRA President Fran Drescher Proposes Trade: “Tariffs Out, Tax Abatements In” for Hollywood

It’s the “Nanny” plan.

Early this month, President Donald Trump famously announced plans to impose a 100% tariff on foreign-made movies in an attempt to prevent the “very fast death” of Hollywood.

Now, Fran Drescher — SAG-AFTRA president and star of “The Nanny” — says that tax breaks would be a better way to make Tinseltown competitive.

“I’m trying to work right now on the tax abatements with President Trump to make sure our industry gets the tax abatement that we need to compete with other countries,” Drescher revealed in an interview at the New York Women’s Foundation’s Celebrating Women Breakfast, where she was honored this week.

“Our president is a businessman. He understands the bottom line. And it’s very difficult to discourage business from going outside of our borders if it’s not economically affordable” to keep it here, she said.

On May 4, Trump announced he wanted to meet with Hollywood insiders to discuss implementing levying taxes on foreign-made films to help boost the US industry, which is still recovering from 2023’s SAG-AFTRA and Writers Guild of America strikes.

“Hollywood doesn’t do very much of that business. They have the nice sign, and everything’s good, but they don’t do very much,” Trump told reporters at the Oval Office at the time.

Fran Drescher

He wrote on his Truth Social app, “The Movie Industry in America is DYING a very fast death. Other Countries are offering all sorts of incentives to draw our filmmakers and studios away from the United States. Hollywood, and many other areas within the U.S.A., are being devastated.”

Drescher, however, believes, “If we get the tax abatement, that will solve the problem,” she said.

“We won’t need tariffs … Let’s get those tax abatements to create an environment in the United States that makes it as appealing as it is in some other nations to produce, and then the problem will be solved,” she said.

A SAG-AFTRA spokesperson told us, “A coalition of industry unions, of which SAG-AFTRA is one, along with MPA and the Hollywood Ambassadors, are working on this issue.”

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