BRITAIN’S performing artists are “industrial-action ready” in the face of US President Donald Trump’s tariff plans, Equity’s newly re-elected general secretary Paul W Fleming said on Saturday.

Addressing the union’s annual conference in Derry, he said that the threat from the  proposed 100 per cent tariff on international films will not lead to a change in Equity’s demands.

The union has put forward a claim for better pay and a demand for regulation on the use of generative AI via Pact (the Producers Alliance for Cinema & Television), Britain’s screen sector trade body for independent production and distribution companies.

“Trump’s threat of tariffs on film was met with hysteria from producers, and sent Netflix’s share price tumbling,” Mr Fleming told the conference. “It revealed the fragility of our own industry — how it is more dependent on cash from the US than strategy from the UK.

“We’re not changing our approach or our demands. The message is simple: we have put in the most ambitious claims for our TV and film agreements in a generation.

“Our union is industrial-action ready. On dignity at work, on royalties, on artificial intelligence, on casting, and on pay: Pact and the streamers need to deliver.”

Mr Fleming said: “Our members will not wait for a global stability which will not come, nor a government strategy which doesn’t exist to save them.

“Our claims stand, tariff or no tariff, inflation high or low: Pact and the streamers need to meet their ambition — they don’t have a choice.”

Earlier this month, Mr Trump said he had authorised the US Department of Commerce and the Office of the US Trade Representative to impose a 100 per cent tariff “on any and all movies coming into our country that are produced in foreign lands.”

Tariffs are taxes charged on goods imported from other countries. It is not clear how a tariff on international productions could be implemented and whether such a tariff would also apply to US film companies producing films abroad.