It’s the cultural equivalent of being the world’s reserve currency, it’s a massive free advantage in almost any situation. Stupid stupid stupid to threaten it.
I know the US better than many parts of Germany.
I read an article years ago from a lawyer (might have been a judge) complaining that, thanks to US TV and movies, people in Sweden know more about how the US justice system works than the Swedish system. Far too many people just fall back on their US TV knowledge of how they think courts work and that they keep having to explain to the people that, no that's not how things works in Sweden.
- Isolationism
- Increase US influence worldwide
- Exploit US influence worldwide
Each one will have a negative effect on the other two.
If you aren't aware, they've shipped most IATSE jobs to Serbia since 2023.
They used to shoot most Disney and Netflix shows in LA and Atlanta. Now they're happening in Eastern Europe. They fly the cast out and film with crews that don't have labor laws or unions and that are an order of magnitude cheaper.
IATSE members have been forced to leave the industry, sell their homes, and move out of California. There are a few holdouts, but it's likely they'll have to exit the industry too.
Once that capacity goes, it'll never come back.
Studios are sitting vacant. CBRE is going to come in and turn them all into office parks and mixed use.
Thats it. The attack is the strategy. Burn some stuff down and move on.
I think it's more pernicious than that. The whole MAGA movement has a rather obvious accelerationist agenda, which leads to self-destructive policies like dismantling basic social safety nets and eliminating basic state institutions. Their policies don't make sense to anyone outside of their cult because we presume the goal is to build upon the state institutions and improve upon what's already there, whereas the MAGA crowd applauds destroying everything down to fundamental rights such as the right to a fair trial. They want to see te world burn hoping they'll be able to rebuild it to their liking. The only members of the MAGA that so far voiced regrets are those who faced the fact that they themselves were being left behind.
> that doesn’t change the fact that Hollywood projects American culture around the world in a way that the government could never do itself
I'll all for the "soft power" of the US, including cultural influence. Just wanted to point out that things have been changing slowly. More and more people started to be more credulous about Hollywood's values. Case in point, Blank Panther won Oscar, yet it was widely criticized in China and its box office in China was miserable. Below is the translation of a popular criticism of Black Panther:
Imagine you made a movie about China, kind of like Black Panther. In it, China is this isolated country with crazy-advanced technology, way ahead of the rest of the world. But instead of a modern government, it's run by tribal warlords—each one basically a dictator. To choose their top leader, they fight each other with knives and spears on top of the Forbidden City.
In your story, Chinese people still do foot binding like it’s totally normal. The elite chieftains live in ridiculous luxury inside the imperial palace. Their medicine is so advanced it’s basically magic—people come back from the dead—and they’ve got levitating trains that look like they’re from another planet.
But regular folks? They live in grass huts, spend their days feeding rhinos (or maybe pandas), and there are barely any roads in the whole country.
Then you take this movie to China and tell everyone it’s a tribute to Chinese culture? People would be so insulted, they might actually beat you up.
If you haven't been following what's happening with film production, basically production has moved from LA, Atlanta, New York, etc. to cheap countries in Eastern Europe and Asia.
A vast majority of IATSE film crew productions have now vacated the US. It's decimated the local film crew workforce and forced many to leave the industry entirely.
I wrote more about it here:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43893915
The film crew folks post a lot about it on Reddit, especially in the /r/film industry(city) subreddits:
https://www.reddit.com/r/FilmIndustryLA/comments/1k39cod/the...
It wasn't.
He's going to flip-flop on this 15 times in the next three months while studios (and other industries) go into hibernation waiting until something (or anything) stabilizes.
Does it, though? I mean, the Trump administration is only making it more expensive for theaters to screen non-US movies. Are you going to even bother going to a cinema if the movie you wanted to see isn't made available? And how dominant are non-US productions in US cinemas?
It sounds like more tarrif bullshit,where the only output is lose-lose.
Since the first Trump administration, young people in Western Europe have increasingly lost their idealization of the United States. I'm 43 and moved to the US ten years ago and I feel like I'm part of the last generation that still wanted to move here. Highly qualified people I know in Europe no longer even consider coming here.
This is 1000% pro-union.
IATSE workers have been decimated by the move of productions to Serbia since 2023.
LA and Atlanta film productions have all but collapsed since the offshoring of production. Serbian crews work without unions for much cheaper than local IATSE members.
This is designed to save IATSE and domestic American production.
Cutting off Hollywood from its funding sources is part of the plan. MAGA controlled states cancelled tax breaks and subsidies for film/tv production years ago, in some cases torpedoing billions in investment in new studios. This isn't a new strategy, this is the amplification of an existing strategy.
But I presume that the major effect of this tariff will be to force large media conglomerates (aka news agencies) to think very carefully about how their news divisions cover Trump.
Isn't it the other way around? American culture was dictated by Hollywood, and the rest of the world mistook it for real American culture?
They're not stupid (well they might be, but that's beside the point), they're just in such fundamental disagreement with you that it's possible to squint and assess the situation as "yup, they're stupid" (and frankly that's a lot more comforting of an assessment).
Film production has been moving steadily overseas chasing cheap labor. By forcing some of it back or forcing it to stay put it makes that industry and the people in it a little more dependent upon government, a little more dependent upon isolationist economic policy, a little more inclined to stay in the government's good graces (i.e. less likely to create stuff the .gov doesn't like), etc, etc, even if it kneecaps the ability of the overall industry to perform globally.
Edit: I shouldn't have to say this but none of the above should be construed as an endorsement of a) high tariffs or b) increased government control of media)
Media with so-called "leftist" themes tend to do well commercially than "rightist" themes, so Hollywood just follows the money?
It doesn’t matter whether Trump understands $thing. Pretending that he’s acting in good faith to make things better, but is somehow failing because he doesn’t get X, Y, or Z falls right into the trap. He’s trying to destroy American “soft power”. It doesn’t interest him.
Neither does a good economy, schools, NATO, etc. All of these things are being destroyed or mangled on purpose.
Local US film industry is dying because it's all offshored.
I live in a country that is leeching off the US film industry with subsidies. Our country benefits at the expense of American jobs.
IMO the other shoe here is stronger content restrictions and more government control of what gets made. Easier to do that with US productions, hence the attempt to make everything distributed in the US a US production.
Protect Hollywood from who, exactly? IIUC, an increasing number of "American" movies (i.e., those produced/financed by American studios) are being filmed outside the US.
This isn't a bunch of foreign film makers ganging up on poor, beleaguered film companies like Disney, Paramount and Neflix.
They, of course, are going to go out of business any minute now because those evil foreigners are taking away their movies. /s
No. Those very profitable studios are choosing to make movies outside the US to bolster those high profits by reducing labor, physical plant and safety expenditures.
As such, how is charging Hollywood studios 100% tariffs to import the movies those same studios paid to make "protecting" Hollywood?
Don't mistake the above for my support of Hollywood studios. They are the OG rapacious scumbags that the SV tech bros are trying (and sometimes succeeding) in emulating.
Still nobody putting up a meaningful fight. Your window is closing.
It ended up with 11 deaths, thousands of injured, thousands of people were arrested hundreds went to jail. Look at Serbia, Greece, damn even Turkey seems to put a better fight lol
https://www.ledauphine.com/france-monde/2018/12/13/gilets-ja...
[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2012_Quebec_student_protests
And giving away the money? You’d lose all amenities of a school, the building, its land, the social benefits of school interactions, etc. Most importantly, you lose classroom management of a teacher, and the kids lose out big time.
A PhD tutor stood in front of determinedly mischevious children, most couldn’t last two weeks.
If the sky is falling on everything he does, and you're wrong some of the time, then people will stop listening. There's plenty that this administration has done that is objectively horrible.
Biggest real action movie last year was “Deadpool & Wolverine”, a Disney movie which was shot in UK and made a bit over 50% of its revenue overseas[1]. Its main stars were Canadian and Australian. Does this mean that you’ll have to pay double to go watch it to cinemas in the US? Will that make Disney to focus on the international market?
[1] https://the-numbers.com/movie/Deadpool-and-Wolverine-(2024)
What did he mean when he said this? Who knows - he probably doesn't even remember himself.
What will the resulting policy, if any, actually be? His advisors were probably hearing it for the first time just like the rest of us.
But it probaby counts that it was shot in the UK. The reason why Disney does that is because they get tax breaks from the UK government, which I think it's what Trump is referring to.
Amazing.
Or the new Lord of The Rings in the Grand Canyon... :)
Why would it be more expensive to produce it in the US, then? I thought one of the reasons for making the movie "abroad" was to get some subsidies from other countries "if you film it here", kind of.
You could construct a variety of accounting methods to calculate a tax on the 'foreign content' of movies, but how do you actually impose this tax?
A tariff on physical goods is easy. A country requires that goods enter the country through customs facilities, and then the nice customs official doesn't release the thing until the tax is paid. The legal and physical ability to impose these taxes is long, long established.
How do you physically impose a tariff on a movie? If the master is transported physically, what is its value? The value of the fixed copy/master doesn't necessarily include the value of the IP involved, in the same way that a DVD of a $500 million movie might have a retail value of $20. What about movies transferred digitally, since there are no customs checkpoints on fiber-optic lines?
What legal apparatus would be used to impose this tax? Trump is currently getting away with the physical-goods tariffs because the legal infrastructure to collect the taxes is already in place, and remaining legal disputes are just about whether the President can unilaterally set or change tariff rates. If you'd need new law to "tariff movies," then the chance of this whim turning into a real tax drops sharply.
It made watching TV shows like Stargate SG1 additionally amusing though -- every planet they visited was basically some location near Vancouver. Me and friends used to joke about how much like carcinisation is a thing in evolution, in the Stargate universe all planets eventually ended up looking like British Columbia.
Work for IATSE crew union members has declined precipitously.
During the pandemic, there was so much demand for content that the studios spent a lot of money teaching foreign crews how to produce films. They sent a lot of staff to Eastern Europe and Asia to train local crews. Serbia, etc., where the crews are making well below union wages and can work long hours without regulation.
Since 2023, 60% or so of productions have vacated LA, Atlanta, and New York in favor of being shot overseas. They just fly the cast out. It's significantly cheaper than filming at home.
IATSE membership is being decimated. Lots of folks have moved out of California because the jobs just aren't there anymore.
Have you ever tried to watch Korean movies from the last 20 years? It's all melodramatic romance-crime-poverty slop, with the rare Kim Ki-duk or Bong Joon Ho in there to balance it out. And that's a country with a wonderful reputation for quality film-making.
I mean you get zombies on a train and that's a fun popcorn flick, but it's forgettable. It's no Tremors, Twister, or Independence Day.
In Indonesia for every The Raid there's 999 poorly acted, poorly shot melodramas with a thin well-trodden story.
And don't get me started on "let's yell at each other for 120 minutes" Russian cinema.
American movies are by far the most watchable, especially when you don't feel like going on a heart-wrenching journey of despair, which is all international cinema excels at.
Having lived in other countries since, this appears to be a common syndrome. You can't judge a country by its tourists, and you certainly can't judge it by the small number of movies that get past its border control.
So many things that hollywood produces are remakes of foreign movies, except with an order of magnitude more money poured in and palate-switched for american audiences. (which, due to the sheer volume of content that comes out of hollywood- becomes the default international palate).
The entertainment industry in Sweden (girl with the dragon tattoo, a man called Otto) and the UK (the countries I have lived in) is undoubtedly very strong, even comparatively poor (not intended as a slur here) India is quite famous for its bombastic action movies.
Russia too, has some of the most thought provoking movies that I've ever seen. Leviathan and Durak- they even have your "fun" action style movies (Brat and Brat 2 for fantastic examples).
To say that Hollywood produces more and thus sometimes better, and that other counties make slop betrays two things:
1) Hollywood steals vigorously from other countries.
2) Other countries produce works that do not translate well for american audiences.
Yes, the US is a wealthy country, with a big population, a healthy movie industries and a lot of consumer. It does mean that the US produce a lot of movies, from auteur movie to holywood blockbuster. Disproportionally more than any other country in the world. But dismissing every non-US movie industry just show your ignorance about cinema in general.
Apparently, here's the data:
California is losing its grip on the film industry as Canada, the UK, and Australia outspend the U.S. on production subsidies.
LA’s soundstage occupancy dropped to 90% pre-strikes, while Warner Brothers and Netflix ramp up overseas filming.
Even a $3.75 billion tax credit boost might not be enough to keep Hollywood on top.
Meanwhile, Vancouver is adding 20 new soundstages, and UK productions hit a record $7 billion.
Here's Ben Affleck talking about this: https://nypost.com/2025/04/18/entertainment/ben-affleck-crit..., https://x.com/MarioNawfal/status/1913449981643456612
Here's Adam Scott and Rob Lowe talking about it: https://x.com/medx0/status/1919178518031896903
Basically it seems that movie production and jobs created by it moved outside of US in a massive way.
Hence the leftist tarrifs meant to reverse that and bring movie production back in US
It'd be clearly unconstitutional to ban them outright; so, where and how's that line drawn?
late edit: I just want to note the text of POTUS' announcement includes this: "It is, in addition to everything else, messaging and propaganda!" The overtly expressed motive here is animus towards the content of the speech (not some content-neutral factor like trade balances).
The EU has been struggling with base evasion and profit shifting (BEPS) from US companies because it was all about IP and they never dared to tax it in fear of upsetting the US government. But if the move comes from the US first, then they will follow suite with a lot of enthusiasm.
A government can apply tariffs to any exchange it chooses, but movies are explicitly excluded from the law on which Trump has relied for tariffs, so short of getting a new law passed to authorize movie tariffs, there is no legal authority.
My point is that it can apply taxes equivalent to tariffs (well, like you said, only Congress can), but since it's not going to be defined by the same law or be regulated by the same international conventions and isn't going to be collected by the same administration nor from the same people (the tax will be raised on the retailer directly, unlike tariffs), I think it's fair not to call that “tariffs” since it's really going to be a very different type of tax.
To me this move seems more a kind of cultural censorship. Similar to how many foreign movies can't be shown in Russia or China.
Most American movies are shot outside of the US these days because among other factors Hollywood unions have made it way more expensive to shoot in the US.
Of course. It's clearly about the fentanyl emergency.
“This is a concerted effort by other Nations and, therefore, a National Security threat,” Trump said in the Truth Social post. “It is, in addition to everything else, messaging and propaganda!”
To me this seems to motivate the tariffs as a battle against foreign propaganda.
Apparently, the president has had the power to change the price of anything at anytime.
If you want to change that, i.e. make people aware of it, don’t just name the section; link to it and briefly explain what it is and why people should be against it. Even doing just one of those three would help your cause.
Letting party members rather than party elites choose the head of party always sounds good in practice but often ends up badly (Truss, Corbyn, etc)
There is EU regulation requiring that 30% of content available on streaming services for European customers are "European works". The definition is a bit complicated, but this is definitely a big part of why plenty of production has moved to Europe and the UK.
If this goes through it could bring some problems for Netflix et al. They can always artificially restrict the low-value content content from customers in EU countries though. As if the arcane licensing and availability landscape wasn't crazy enough for media...
(See the "Audiovisual Media Services Directive")
Anyway, as usual other countries will retaliate. American movies will become both more expensive to make and taxed abroad. Meanwhile, we can expect more people will turn to piracy to cope with rising inflation. I can't imagine any scenario where this isn't backfiring.
Because I would love to read the National Security justification for imposing a tariff on foreign movies.
In fact I'm sure some US companies are gonna be hit by this such as Netflix ? Disney ?
1. Media spin or early reporting, it is nothing in stone yet. This should be the understanding for any "new policy" announced m-f for this admin.
2. Even if it is to be set in stone, likely will be rescinded.
3. It is vague on purpose ^
4. Assuming it becomes set in ston, it is a direct pander to Disney, Universal etc. from the current admin. Chinese film making (animation in particular) is now outperforming Disney in every metric in every market.
5. Disney et all. stand to lose either way. This is capitalism at work and american film studios will see costs skyrocket as local and foreign competitors silo resources.
And the dialogs not inspired from the book are as expected, but that's modern cinema, not Hollywood in particular. That noone took the torch from Audiard or Prevert is a shame.
> The authority granted to the President by this section does not include the authority to regulate or prohibit, directly or indirectly [...] the importation from any country, or the exportation to any country, whether commercial or otherwise, regardless of format or medium of transmission, of any information or informational materials, including but not limited to, publications, films, posters, phonograph records, photographs, microfilms, microfiche, tapes, compact disks, CD ROMs, artworks, and news wire feeds.
https://truthsocial.com/@realDonaldTrump/posts/1144521171432...
What is going on there? Why don't they fix the likes for him? :-D
This is 100% targeted at Canada, and trying to threaten destroying the Canadian film industry as another lever against Canada.
And it is laughably silly. Even in Canada alone, "Hollywood" nets far more than it ever spends here[1]. And of course worldwide media is something that the US has an enormous trade surplus. It's yet another harebrained bit of nonsense from the extremely smooth, simpleton mind of Trump and his greasy used-car salesman, carnival barker Howard Lutnick.
What Trump is really achieving in all of these declarations is making the rest of the world ask why do we accept Hollywood controlling the film or music industry, or Silicon Valley controlling the tech industry, or NYC the financial industry, etc? The end result of this is going to be massive decentralization and lowered importance of US industry leadership.
[1] Not to mention that the tax credits quite literally subsidizes the industry. And FWIW, I am wholly against tax credits for film productions, and much like paying a sports team to build a stadium, the accounting of the supposed benefit just doesn't make any sense.
One of the most amazing things about the Idiocracy administration in place in the US is this belief that everything is the domain of Americans, and if any other nation is doing it, clearly they're stealing it. Canada had an automotive industry as long as the US did. We used to have the AutoPact before NAFTA, and we need to bring it back. Canada has a robust film industry on its own.
So when Howard Nutlick does his embarrassing "why does Canada make our films" act, there is a point there -- zero US media should be allowed into Canada. None. All IP rights on US products should be abolished. All patents and other.
Seems like Trump is the best ally for all those who want to reduce US influence in the world.
Last time he let himself be surrounded by people with experience from other administrations. They frequently ran interference. This time he's doing it his way.
It's not as if this is unexpected. He said what he was going to do. This is what the voters voted for, and his constituents support him.
There’s a nugget of truth to Hollywood moving production overseas, but I’m not convinced a massive tariff will have the effect Trump wants. Just like all his other economic fuckery.
https://bsky.app/profile/garyalexander.bsky.social/post/3lof...
> This user has requested that their content only be shown to signed-in users.
Oh great, a Twitter replacement that implements worst of it's predecessor features.
The Trump admin seems to be hastening the day that foreign website are more popular than US websites.
China has been stepping on a number fronts. They are working on trade deals that exclude the US, and I'm sure are excited about the soft power vacuum left when USAID shutdown.
Look at the list of films made at Pinewood Studios in England, there are plenty of films I'd consider American: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_productions_filmed_at_...
(I'm sure there are other examples, this is just the studio I'm familiar with.)
The world will adjust to this, it just takes longer than a few months...
Not sure how that looks - probably starts with not imposing tariffs.
The EU could do it; basically nobody else is in the ballpark to try. No chance though.
Everyone is looking at Nigeria. More than doubling their population by the end of the century. Extremely healthy population pyramid.
India is soon to be the new Asian superpower. Which sure is wrecking their neighbours with their slower urbanization that is avoiding the WW2 blight.
These 2 are the likely next world order candidates; if they play their cards right.
Huge amounts of the top brass of hollywood are disgusting. Tom Cruise and the rest of Scientologies leadership should be in prison right now, and that's just one tiny example of the sea of shit found in hollywood.
It’s like saying that the entire tech industry should be destroyed and screw all the tech workers, they should all lose their jobs because Zuckerberg is an awful person.
I agree with you that Scientology is a criminal organization though.
I can't think of any country that the US imports more movies from than it exports?
Even if you believe in tariffs what industry in America does this protect that needs protection?
Of is he gambling on recipritoral tarrifs to 'punish' the liberal Hollywood???? Sounds conspiracy-like but I legit can't think of any other reason this makes sense.
Since Trump is relying on declarations of national emergencies for his tariffs, there's the question whether it's even legal given that Berman Amendments to the IEEPA[0] explicitly exempt "informational materials, including but not limited to, publications, *films*, posters, phonograph records, photographs, microfilms, microfiche, tapes, compact disks, CD ROMs, artworks, and news wire feeds" from the President's authority under IEEPA.[1]
Even if we set that aside and ignore the likely legal challenges, how would you actually implement them? It's not like a movie or TV episode "produced" overseas gets transmitted into the US each time somebody wants to watch it. It's a digital file, and you're really only sending it once. So when do you tariff the damn thing, how do you manage to actually do it since there's not exactly a literal port of entry for the internet, and what exactly do you value it at? The system isn't built to track and tariff info being uploaded to random servers, and making it work would require all sorts of new law.
Plus, what's the legal definition of "production" he wants to use? What constitutes foreign production? Can some of the producing just be done remotely? What if raw footage is uploaded instead and then it's edited here? Or a nearly finished copy that just needs something minor done to be considered ready? Hollywood accountants are in a league of their own. Put them in a room with lawyers and accountants whose focus is the creative eccentricities of tariff engineering--hello, chicken tax people[0]--and I shudder to imagine what they'd get up to.
We're only a few months in at this point, and I feel like I'm losing my mind.
0. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Emergency_Econom...
1. https://www.congress.gov/bill/103rd-congress/house-bill/2333...
I don't see a problem here, this is what tariffs are actually for. Broken clock is right twice a day yada yada
eta: one can not like the man and not think this is a bad idea. same as we don't need more dolls from china and it's weird for us to suddenly die on that hill. /shrug
Think of all the American jobs that are lost when a film studio chooses to shoot on-location in Paris instead of attempting to build a replica of Paris in Los Angeles. No one ever thinks about all of the construction workers who never get a chance to build a fake Eiffel Tower, or all of the struggling local actors whose attempts to fake French accents will never be heard by audiences, let alone the HVAC technicians who make sure the air conditioners work properly in the indoor studio sets that have to be used to film outdoor scenes in Paris so that the Champs-Élysées doesn't look like Wilshire Boulevard.
As an outsider it seems a lot like groups pulling the political levers in the US only ensure candidates that can be ‘handled’ are put forward and those that can’t will be rooted out.
That’s why the choice was between braindead Biden vs deranged Trump. And when it was clear Biden wasn’t an option, a belated shift to try sell Kamala to the electorate.
I don’t think we’ll see strong presidential candidates - those clearly motivated to better the country and its citizens - in the near future either. The process now seems to suit the corporate and lobby groups who jostle to get their share of influence.
I mean, there was one candidate who fawns over dictators, is a felon, always acts in his own personal interest, and had very public plans to try to dismantle democracy and seize ultimate power. Then there was another who would at worst continue the status quo and not try to overthrow the government.
It feels ridiculous to claim there was no appealing option. It’s like being given the option between losing both arms or being slapped in the face and shrugging that none of the options is appealing. At least try to pick the least unappealing.
Why would a political apparatus that only wants to offer candidates that can be 'handled' instead offer up a senile geriatric and a stubborn narcissist, both of whom are severely lacking in their capacity to take direction?
elbows up! Though i dont recommend continuing to antagonize trump even more because it's just triggering his ego and making him retaliate.
