- Trump says movies produced outside the U.S. are a national security threat. So he’s imposing a 100% tariff on all movies that are “produced in foreign lands.”
- On its face, this is about getting more movies produced in the U.S., but obviously this is also a mechanism you'd use to stop foreign sources of information from getting into your country.
- 👀
- It's impossible to overstate how critical movies were to establishing U.S. hegemony in the 20th century.
- “It is unclear how such a tariff would work because movies aren’t physical goods that move through ports like most items subject to tariffs. [Trump] would need to determine how to value a movie in order to apply the tariffs, as well as what the threshold would be to classify it as an import.”
May 5, 2025 03:00
- And here's the walk back: "Although no final decisions on foreign film tariffs have been made, the Administration is exploring all options to deliver on President Trump’s directive to safeguard our country’s national and economic security while Making Hollywood Great Again."
- Does he even know what a tariff is?
- Or he really just has to determine how much movie producers need to pay him to forget the whole thing. Because that’s probably what’s gonna happen. More bribery.
- It’s easy to implement: just add a tariff module to every cinema point-of-sale system, train all cinema staff the minutiae of the calculation this week and how to configure it, then pay the duty and get your ticket stamped in the customs line and show it to the customs officer at the cinema door.
Trump hasn't thought about it, thinks it's obvious and will never listen to anyone explaining how complicated this proposal is
