After Trump tossed off another of his insane ideas Sunday night — this one about charging a 100% tariff on movies made outside the US — media writers fell over themselves yesterday pumping out pieces on how such a proposal might come to fruition.
But leave it to Rick Ellis of All Your Screens to keep things in perspective, reminding the world once again the emperor isn’t wearing any clothes:
First of all, even if he wanted to do something like that, it’s simply not possible. Your local movie theater isn’t importing a copy of the latest hot movie for screenings that begin next week. Films are essentially a service industry and even if you believe American studios should be given some sort of leg up, the reality is that most of the “foreign” movie productions are actually produced at least in part by American studios. To say nothing of the complications of co-productions and movie licensing and all sorts of other issues. There is simply no way to impose “tariffs” on foreign produced films.
But rather than just writing that and being done with it, various outlets are cranking out hot takes looking at each individual aspect of this impossible idea and dissecting it as if it was a real thing. But personal favorite was a piece in The Wrap, which was built around a Citigroup analyst who estimated that under a “worst case scenario,” the proposed tariffs could add an additional $3 billion to the streamer’s original content costs. He apparently came to this conclusion by applying the 100 percent tariff cost to any movie Netflix produces outside the United States. Which — to be clear — is not how any of this stuff works.
There are things the Trump Administration could do that would actually help Hollywood, including rolling out national production rebates and tax breaks. But neither of those suggestions are tariffs. Because short of just imposing a flat tariff on any streamer that has a presence outside the United States, there is no way the American government can impose a tariff on foreign-produced films.
Thank you, Rick, for seeing through the media fog to get to the truth while others keep falling over themselves pretending this was a real thing.