Tariffs on Foreign Films?

Are you worried about the threat of foreign films?

For that matter, aside from Bollywood, are you aware that there is such a thing as a foreign movie industry? It sounds vaguely familiar, but when was the last time you went to see a foreign film?

Everything is a national security threat.

Foreign films are full of sinister ideas that endanger Americans. They must be stopped. Americans are helpless if the U.S. government doesn’t intervene. Thank you, U.S. government, for saving us from foreign propaganda! pic.twitter.com/PXlIduujrz

— Justin Amash (@justinamash) May 5, 2025

I tend to agree with the people criticizing Trump’s move to impose tariffs on foreign films–it seems unworkable in practice, and I’m pretty sure woke ideology is a worse propaganda threat than any that foreign governments might sneak into films that any American would be likely to see. 

In other words, foreign films aren’t an obvious national security threat, and tariffs aren’t going to address the much deeper threat that lefty Disney executives pose to our vulnerable youth. And if that is the case, the rationale the president is asserting to give himself the power to impose such tariffs unilaterally is pretty stupid. 

But, to be fair, Trump’s “Truth” in which he announces these tariffs suggests that his worry is not that Americans are being force-fed Chinese propaganda through the nefarious means of producing films anybody wants to see. What it is really all about is striking back at the subsidies foreign governments give to American film companies to shoot their films elsewhere. 

In other words, Trump’s real problem seems to be that countries like Canada are luring studios to shoot movies on their shores. It’s not the movie studios who are being hurt–although he implies that in his tweet–but labor. The studios are actually being given a deal, not being hurt by foreign competition. 

Either that, or Trump is making the most idiotic claim: that the Canadians, the French, or the Chinese are outcompeting American studios. If that is the case, I’d love to see the numbers that show it. 

Here are the national security-threatening 10 highest US gross box office foreign films of all time pic.twitter.com/NaMt5yhTlh

— David Burge (@iowahawkblog) May 5, 2025

So let’s assume that my more rational explanation for Trump’s move–protecting laborers in the movie industry by driving studios to reshore the filming of movies back to the United States–is the real motivation, and the whole national security/propaganda is the fig leaf he is using to justify his power to impose the tariffs. Does he have a case to be made?

I don’t think so. This policy still seems stupid and counterproductive. As annoying as it is to have Canada outcompete America as a place to shoot movies, tariffs are a pretty awful way to deal with a minor problem in the grand scheme of things. Film subsidies are a thing in many US states- also a stupid policy- and if the president believes this is an issue, he should just include it as part of the massive trade renegotiations that are going on right now. 

Let’s face it, if Trump is right that the studios are being killed these days, it has nothing to do with foreign competition. There is no French “Die Hard” or “Bourne” movie that is trashing American films because foreign governments are flooding the country with propaganda films, corrupting the minds of Americans. 

The problem is that American movies have sucked eggs for the past few years, both because the studios have run out of good ideas and because the few ideas they have are themselves unwelcome woke propaganda that Americans are rejecting in droves. The market is sending a big message to Hollywood. Chinese competition is not the problem. 

The one area in which foreign governments have inordinate influence is something no tariff can address: studios, being dependent on foreign viewers for much of their profits, are afraid to offend countries like China. Foreign governments pressure studios to avoid topics that undermine their domestic propaganda. Remember the controversy about Top Gun removing the Taiwanese flag on Maverick’s jacket? The studio hid the flag to ensure it could access hundreds of millions of moviegoers in China. To add insult to injury, Chinese company Tencent was an investor in the movie. 

Top Gun’s producers restored the flag, lost the investor, and the movie wasn’t released in China. No amount of tariffs could address this issue. It’s the American studios, chasing the Chinese market, who are inserting propaganda or failing to criticize China at times, and that is a problem that tariffs can’t address. 

In short, the problem with America’s movie industry is American in origin, so “America First” policies won’t save the industry. Adjusting to the market here will help, and the China propaganda problem is all about dealing with the politics of accessing the Chinese market, not the Chinese flooding our market with cheap films. 

The US government can’t solve this problem. I’m not sure why Trump is trying to.