Trump tariffs: US president says non-US movies to be hit with 100% levies
Trump tariffs: US president says non-US movies to be hit with 100% levies
The president blamed foreign-made movies for the American film industry's "very fast death".
Speaking to BBC Radio 4's Today programme, he said: "Is it where the money comes from? The script, the director, the talent, where it was shot?"
These are the important questions to asking. I imagine there won't be strict definitions of "US made" films instead it will be a "vibes" based criteria used to punish people who go against the Trump Administration's policies.
It's another control gate on the economy that he can manipulate. He is basically finding ways to insert himself in his amounts of commerce. It's a trump tax via bribes
How would that even work? At what point do you charge the tariff?
That's a good question. Everything is digital nowadays, so it's not like we're getting film reels from Bollywood.
If I had to wager a guess, the cinemas would probably be paying the tariff at the time of acquiring the license to show the film.
Or more likely the streaming service. How much of Netflix/Prime/Apple/Hulu's library is shot outside the contiguous US? How much is entirely foreign everything except funding and profits?
I think this is good. It will help local (outside the US) artistic industries space to flourish without being threatened by Hollywood.
Movies all over the world face inmence pressure form competing from Hollywood, buy without that pressure, they could focus on their local strengths instead.
Yeah USians are probably fucked though, but it's kinda bad to feel bad for the facists and their enablers.
i don’t really see how… it’ll make movies from outside the US more expensive inside the US, but it doesn’t effect the price of US movies elsewhere
… without retaliation from many other countries of course, but idk if that’ll happen really: europe has kinda gone with retaliating in other areas: specific to applying pressure rather than broad
International movie makers will stop trying to appease Hollywood because they know that it's very unlikely their movies will play in the US. So they will focus on other international markets. It's the same thing we saw with the other tariffs, right? Buyers and sellers are going to look for new business deals in every other country in the world because it makes more sense than dealing with a lunatic who were randomly impose and erase tariffs.
I didn't vote for him. But fuck me anyway I guess.
There is a whole lot more to a healthy democracy than "I voted".
Explain to me how the fuck does this fix the economy?…
Making people poorer helps the rich get richer
Ah yes that correct!
I don't think that's what he's trying to do.
I was under the impression that they film a great deal of movies in Canada because it costs far less than filming anywhere else. We also have places that look very modern while maintaining very gothic cities and all of the land in between that could be filmed to look like many places abroad. So he's costing the film industry the savings that they have gotten used to by filming in Canada. Art of the deal.
Tons of Hollywood films are shot in Hungary! Dune being one of them, but there's many many more. Cheap extras, cheap studio space and VFX industry.
Which will result in retaliation against US movies, thus further undermining the US's unparalleled soft power.
This man is doing literally everything Putin could ever want.
And probably demanded
Apart from the point that this would be illegal (he won't know or care, but it is), imagine other countries responding in kind? At least our country imports more media from the US than we produce on our own. And the return tarrifs costs and losses caused by that would also hit primarily US companies like Netflix, Disney, Amazon, AplleTV...
Movies and TV shows are the US's cultural export. It helps keep us front of mind. They are essentially asking for retaliation where the US is erased from all foreign screens.
As a non American, that kind of sounds like a good thing tbh. US cultural exportation is why the MAGA right is popping up all over the west
I'm getting so sick of this guy.
The US being by far the biggest exporter of movies, the only way this makes sense is that Trump is not seeing enough ass-kissing (and
bribescampaign donations) from the US movie industry, so he's actively trying to damage them.Claim foreign movies are a threat, wait for other countries to retaliate against US movies, sit back and watch
bribessales of $TRUMP grow as the major studios seek his political favor.I mean at least this is one of the situations where at its base a tariff makes sense in an industry protectionist way. Its not like putting insane tariffs on goods we dont even manufacture here whatsoever, which is just stupid.
That said, a 100% tariff is just mind bogglingly stupid dick-swinging in this already hostile trade environment. It would make more sense if it was like 5%. Not something that will make the world boycott our media
I mean at least this is one of the situations where at its base a tariff makes sense in an industry protectionist way
Except for the fact that - under no circumstances - do you need tariffs to protect a wildly successful industry. That makes no sense because there's nothing to protect against. It can literally only do harm.
Actually this doesn't protect the industry in any way. It's an extreme threat to American movies, music, and tech. So far, other countries have not been taxing the US on those three classes of items and services, but if they do, it will destroy Apple and Google and Microsoft and Hollywood in a matter of months.
It's probably just racism.
Another "Trump said" that should be ignored.
How would this even work? Tariffs function by holding the physical items in customs, until the tax is paid. But a licensing deal on a digital good, that can be transfered undetected over the internet, is impossible to teriff. You could tax it other ways, but 100% of what. The distribution license? The copyright?
I guarantee he hasn't thought about any of this, and as such this mindless utterance a can be safely ignored.
I'm not sure what logistical hurdle you think cannot be overcome here. All he needs to do is find some stage in the game where any vendor in the United States is required to disclose and pay a tax on whatever is specifically identified as the targeted item. You don't need to hold the things in customs to do that. We already have tons of taxes that depend partly on the tax filer being honest. And of course they can always be audited later.
The more logical choice would be to tax the distribution license sold by non American entities.
The thing that makes this unenforceable is that what he means is that he wants to tax movies not filmed fully in the US even if they are American movies.
As a dual US and EU citizen, good!* European movies are better than that Hollywood shit anyway.
*for the record, neither this nor anything else Trump is doing is actually good.
Ok? This is current year, I can just use a VPN to stream foreign movies.
I am so tired of all the BS this regime keeps throwing at everything.
This guy is playing a board game and losing to a toddler.
The problem is he brought a deck of poker cards to a chess game.
For someone that said he explicitly doesn't like losers, he sure can embody one.
Relax. Hell backtrack on them in 3 weeks.
Can we make sure that we define non-US movies as any movie that's got a primary non-US investor? So that, given the amount of money China has poured into Disney, it makes them non-US? And all the Chinese film companies that have been sniffing around and snapping up productions that should be US based?
Unrelated but the "W" in the Hollywood sign is asymmetrical.
China and many countries are huge consumers of American movies and entertainment.
Let them retaliate up the wazoo. We deserve everything we get. It just sucks that us non-magas have to suffer for their idiocy.
China doesn't need to retaliate. Chinese cinema goers are overwhelmingly choosing domestic product over import in recent years. For 2024, for example, 80% of the Chinese box office went to Chinese productions.
Good thing the Lord of the Rings has been done for years. I dont actually understand qhat this tariffs is. If a movie has ro be filmed on site in say Italy, but everything else is done in America, is that ok? 🫤 I am lost.