China Retaliates By Punishing … Hollywood?

I’ve heard of clueless briar-patch strategies, but this one really takes the cake. Or a Golden Raspberry, perhaps. 

Rumors have swirled the last few days that China’s Xi Jinping had compiled a precise set of retaliatory actions against the US in the trade war touched off by Donald Trump’s tariffs. Today’s report from Bloomberg doesn’t produce much evidence that Beijing understands anything about American economics, and especially about American politics. Instead, it looks more like Xi is cutting off his nose to spite his US propaganda face:

China announced it would curb imports of Hollywood films, opening a new front in its trade war with the US hours after President Donald Trump’s record tariffs took effect.

Authorities vowed on Thursday to “moderately reduce” the number of US movies allowed into the world’s second-largest economy — a step floated earlier this week as a possible retaliation measure by two influential Chinese bloggers. 

“The wrong action of the US government to abuse tariffs on China will inevitably further reduce the domestic audience’s favorability toward American films,” the China Film Administration said in a statement announcing the move.

Oh no! Whatever will Donald Trump do without his rock-solid base of support from, er … [checks notes] … the limousine liberals of Hollywood? 

Jinping, my dude — do you know nothing about American politics?

Rest assured, this retaliation has Donald Trump shaking in his boots. It’s from laughter, of course, but still:

“China retaliated today by reducing the number of American films that can be shown there. What’s your reaction to them now targeting cultural exports?”@POTUS: “I’ve heard of worse things.” 🤣 pic.twitter.com/zpseCdDXEX

— Rapid Response 47 (@RapidResponse47) April 10, 2025

Only in Beijing would anyone interpret this as leverage over Donald Trump. Hollywood’s elite already hate Trump, and the feeling is more than mutual. If share prices fall for companies like Disney, Warner, and Paramount, all it means to Trump is that his political opposition will have fewer resources to array against him and his policies. Kneecapping Hollywood’s power brokers practically amounts to a political side benefit in the trade war with China.

It’s a self-defeating move in other ways, too. The US entertainment industry, and not just in films, spent the past generation kissing Beijing’s pucker to get access to their audience. They have marginalized human-rights advocates such as Richard Gere to appease the Chinese Communist Party, and routinely warp their product to paint China’s government in the most favorable light. Whether it’s in silly nonsense like 2012 and the Red Dawn remake or higher-profile efforts like The Martian, Blackhat, and Disney’s fawning salutes to cheap Chinese labor in their credits, Hollywood reliably paints the regime in Beijing as selfless, open, and entirely beneficent in order to maintain access to the market that Xi’s regime now threatens to restrict.

If this threat isn’t cutting off the nose to spite the face, it’s only because cutting off the mouth seems like a better analogy. 

For these reasons, China’s retaliation against its loyal propagandists might actually be a win for true artistic honesty — and maybe just for American cinema in general. If Hollywood loses access to China’s markets, it might be less inclined to make little else other than mindless comic-book tentpole regurgitations and shrink budgets to fit economic reality. They could produce more films for less money, and stop pushing apple-polishing storylines to please commissars in Beijing rather than tell stories that reflect reality rather than Communist posing. 

I suspect that China’s bluffing on this particular method of retaliation. I also suspect that these media companies that do business in China are rushing to make contact with the Xi regime to explain just how humorous this threat is to Trump. Perhaps those same executives might reflect on their dependence on a slave-labor totalitarian regime that has spent the last generation engaged in economic and cyber warfare against this country, at the moment when we are finally pushing back in a substantive manner. Don’t hold your breath waiting for that moment of clarity to strike in Tinseltown, however.