The US being by far the biggest exporter of movies, the only way this makes sense is that Trump is not seeing enough ass-kissing (and bribes campaign donations) from the US movie industry, so he’s actively trying to damage them.
Claim foreign movies are a threat, wait for other countries to retaliate against US movies, sit back and watch bribes sales of $TRUMP grow as the major studios seek his political favor.
I mean at least this is one of the situations where at its base a tariff makes sense in an industry protectionist way. Its not like putting insane tariffs on goods we dont even manufacture here whatsoever, which is just stupid.
That said, a 100% tariff is just mind bogglingly stupid dick-swinging in this already hostile trade environment. It would make more sense if it was like 5%. Not something that will make the world boycott our media
Actually this doesn’t protect the industry in any way. It’s an extreme threat to American movies, music, and tech. So far, other countries have not been taxing the US on those three classes of items and services, but if they do, it will destroy Apple and Google and Microsoft and Hollywood in a matter of months.
The Chinese market is huge, yes, but increasingly turning away from Hollywood productions to homegrown ones. In 2025 for example 哪吒2 (Nézhā 2) broke scored over $2 billion at the box office, with a record-smashing $1.96 billion of that coming domestically. By way of comparison Captain America 4 only managed $14.4 million so far, a dramatic drop from 2016’s Captain America 3 returns of $180 million in 2016.
For reference, even CA3’s $180 million is an order of magnitude smaller than Nezha 2. CA4’s is two orders of magnitude smaller.
Now this is still true: China’s theatre-going audience, estimated at over half a billion people, is larger than the entire population of the USA. It’s still a hugely important market. But, for example, in 2024 the Chinese box office was estimated at ~6 billion dollars total: and 80% of that went to domestic films. The best-performing foreign film of 2024 (Dune 2) only made $48 million, ranking it about 8th. 7th was 维和防暴队 (Wéihé Fángbàoduì/Formed Police Unit) and it made over $120 million.
I’m pretty sure that the Chinese market for Hollywood films is vanishing.
I mean at least this is one of the situations where at its base a tariff makes sense in an industry protectionist way
Except for the fact that - under no circumstances - do you need tariffs to protect a wildly successful industry. That makes no sense because there’s nothing to protect against. It can literally only do harm.
The US being by far the biggest exporter of movies, the only way this makes sense is that Trump is not seeing enough ass-kissing (and
bribescampaign donations) from the US movie industry, so he’s actively trying to damage them.Claim foreign movies are a threat, wait for other countries to retaliate against US movies, sit back and watch
bribessales of $TRUMP grow as the major studios seek his political favor.I mean at least this is one of the situations where at its base a tariff makes sense in an industry protectionist way. Its not like putting insane tariffs on goods we dont even manufacture here whatsoever, which is just stupid.
That said, a 100% tariff is just mind bogglingly stupid dick-swinging in this already hostile trade environment. It would make more sense if it was like 5%. Not something that will make the world boycott our media
Actually this doesn’t protect the industry in any way. It’s an extreme threat to American movies, music, and tech. So far, other countries have not been taxing the US on those three classes of items and services, but if they do, it will destroy Apple and Google and Microsoft and Hollywood in a matter of months.
The Chinese market has been huge for Hollywood, a reciprocal tariff would really change the budget math.
The Chinese market is huge, yes, but increasingly turning away from Hollywood productions to homegrown ones. In 2025 for example 哪吒2 (Nézhā 2) broke scored over $2 billion at the box office, with a record-smashing $1.96 billion of that coming domestically. By way of comparison Captain America 4 only managed $14.4 million so far, a dramatic drop from 2016’s Captain America 3 returns of $180 million in 2016.
For reference, even CA3’s $180 million is an order of magnitude smaller than Nezha 2. CA4’s is two orders of magnitude smaller.
Now this is still true: China’s theatre-going audience, estimated at over half a billion people, is larger than the entire population of the USA. It’s still a hugely important market. But, for example, in 2024 the Chinese box office was estimated at ~6 billion dollars total: and 80% of that went to domestic films. The best-performing foreign film of 2024 (Dune 2) only made $48 million, ranking it about 8th. 7th was 维和防暴队 (Wéihé Fángbàoduì/Formed Police Unit) and it made over $120 million.
I’m pretty sure that the Chinese market for Hollywood films is vanishing.
Except for the fact that - under no circumstances - do you need tariffs to protect a wildly successful industry. That makes no sense because there’s nothing to protect against. It can literally only do harm.
It’s probably just racism.