Why Trump's tariff from the foreign film does not make sense

“The film industry in America dies very quickly,” President Donald Trump posted on Sunday evening on his social platform Truth Social. “Other countries offer all possible incentives to pull our filmmakers and studios from the USA. Hollywood and many other areas in the USA are destroyed. This is a concerted effort of other nations, and therefore a national security threat.

Minister of Commerce Howard Lutnick replied to X: “We are there.”

However, experts say time that it is not clear how such a directive would work or who would be calculated such a tariff.

“I know that it is not the task of the US government or the president's task to understand how films are made,” says entertainer Kathryn Arnold.

While the President identified a real problem -the US film industry actually suffered when production is increasingly moving after overseas -experts agree that Trump's apparently popular political instrument, tariffs, tariffs, is not a really applicable solution.

Trump's global trade war has so far divided the taxes for foreign goods for which the United States is a net importer. However, foreign films are intellectual property and part of the global trade of services for which the United States are actually a net exporter.

Read more: Why China laughs at the idea that Americans accept their manufacturing jobs

“The operational theory that seems to commit the Trump government is that if it makes foreign production more attractive for some of the American industry, the domestic production will improve. Angeles (UCLA). “It was predictable that it would also turn to entertainment.”

“If it is cost -intensive to produce cinema films and episodic television or to acquire films or episodic television from foreign areas, this would at least be the case from the perspective of its government that foreign production returns to the United States.

Trump spoke to reporters outside of the White House on Sunday evening: “Other nations stole Moviemaking skills from the USA.” Trump added that he carried out “very strong research” last week and that “Hollywood is destroyed” and “If you are not ready to make a film in the USA, then we should have a tariff for films that come in.”

While Hollywood has recorded a decline in production in recent years, Arnold, due to increasing labor costs, announced that Trump can actually try to reverse this trend by offering incentives such as tax credits for the shooting in the USA that are already doing some countries and cities in the United States. However, this would only affect one aspect of filmmaking, and some films make several places. Arnold added that many films are also produced by several production companies in the countries.

Providing an incentive for certain production aspects would be much easier than trying to try to determine whether a film is “American” or “foreign” to punish the latter.

The US trade representative's office has declared that services are not subject to customs accounts, but are subject to trade barriers such as the official requirements. But when it comes to film and entertainment, the imposition of certain restrictions can lead to a dramatically less free media environment within the country.

In China, foreign films are defined as every film that is not produced by domestic production companies and that cannot have more than 49% foreign partnership shares, strict censorship and odds that have to be received through state dealers. And in response to Trump's latest tariffs against the country's goods, the Chinese government announced that the quota of the US films, which are approved in its massive but closely controlled market, to reduce moderately.

There is also a risk that other countries would show a tariff from foreign film. And since the film industry corresponds to one of the strongest exports of the service sector in America-the latest economic business report by Motion Picture Association from 2023, “it produced a positive balance of trade in all important market for the world” for strategic and international studies, the economic advisors and former president of the national foreign council, William Reinsch, to Reutersch to Reutersch:

Trump's Tariff proposal from Trump, who sent Jitter through the entertainment industry, came after he had met the President “Special Ambassador” in Hollywood at the weekend in Mar-Lago.

Voight addressed the meeting in a video declaration divided on Monday and said that after consultation with industry leaders, he had submitted recommendations for “certain tax regulations that can help the industry” in order to take into account the decline in domestic film production. According to a press release from the SP media group of the Voight Manager, the recommendations contained significant changes to several tax codes, the establishment of co-production contracts with countries abroad and infrastructure subsidies, film and television production companies and post-production companies. ” According to the publication, the proposal also includes a focus on vocational training and tariffs under certain circumstances.