Does Trump need the adrenaline boost of getting in a new fight to make his day complete, as well as keep his name in the headlines? We’ll recap some of the latest developments in his tariff war.
Bye bye foreign films? First, to Trump’s latest attention-grabbing row of putting 100% tariffs on foreign movies. His Truth Social rant:
Of course, Trump and his ilk would never consider what neoliberalism has done to fiction publishing and the theater in the US, and that the endless milking of action franchises has turned off a lot of once-loyal movie viewers.1 No, it’s those conniving furrniers! From BBC:
US President Donald Trump says he will hit movies made in foreign countries with 100% tariffs, as he ramps up trade disputes with nations around the world.
Trump said he was authorising the US Department of Commerce and Trade Representative to start the process to impose the levy because America’s movie industry was dying “a very fast death”.
He blamed a “concerted effort” by other countries that offer incentives to attract filmmakers and studios, which he described as a “National Security threat.
Foreign movies as a national emergency? Seriously? But does anyone have the staying power to sue?
More from the BBC:
But the details of the move are unclear. Trump’s statement did not say whether the tariff would apply to American production companies producing films abroad.
Several recent major movies produced by US studios were shot outside America, including Deadpool & Wolverine, Wicked and Gladiator II.
It was also unclear if the tariffs would apply to films on streaming services, like Netflix, as well as those shown at cinemas, or how they would be calculated.
The governments of Australia and New Zealand have spoken out in support of their countries’ film industries.
Reuters gives more detail on foreign production:
In January, Trump appointed Hollywood veterans Jon Voight, Sylvester Stallone and Mel Gibson to bring Hollywood back “bigger, better and stronger than ever before.”
Movie and TV production has been exiting Hollywood for years, heading to locations with tax incentives that make filming cheaper.
Governments around the world have increased credits and cash rebates to attract productions and capture a greater share of the $248 billion that Ampere Analysis predicts will be spent globally in 2025 to produce content.
So how does one count the origin of a movie with AI actors? Will the ability to classify a considerably AI movies as American if American-managed/funded accelerate this trend? And as for Netflix, I’ve never been a fan of streaming and hope my DVD collection proves to be adequate.
De minimus exemption ends….whacking lower income consumers as well as Meta and Facebook. NBER confirmed that the end of this exemption on shipments will hit lower income buyers hard.
A U.S. consumer can import $800 worth of goods per day free of tariffs and administrative fees. Fueled by rising direct-to-consumer trade, these “de minimis” shipments have exploded in recent years, yet are not recorded in Census trade data. Who benefits from this type of trade, and what are the policy implications? We analyze international shipment data, including de minimis shipments, from three global carriers and U.S. Customs and Border Protection. Lower-income zip codes are more likely to import de minimis shipments, particularly from China, which suggests that the tariff and administrative fee incidence in direct-to-consumer trade disproportionately benefits the poor. Theoretically, imposing tariffs above a threshold leads to terms-of-trade gains through bunching, even in a setting with complete pass-through of linear tariffs. Empirically, bunching pins down the demand elasticity for direct shipments. Eliminating §321 would reduce aggregate welfare by $10.9- $13.0 billion and disproportionately hurt lower-income and minority consumers.2
Trump and his fellow travelers really do hate the poors.
CNN was more dramatic. From A massive tariff on millions of Americans’ purchases just went into effect — cue the chaos:
CBP [Customs and Border Patrol] told CNN it currently processes “nearly 4 million duty-free de minimis shipments a day.” Research indicates that a majority of those shipments come from China and Hong Kong. In total, over the last fiscal year, CBP said 1.36 billion packages came to the US under the de minimis exemption…
Regular Temu and Shein shoppers told CNN this week they’ve increasingly turned to the site as they feel made-in-the-USA products have gotten out of reach.
“I can’t afford to buy from Temu now, and I already couldn’t afford to buy in this country,” Rena Scott, a 64-year-old retired nurse from Virginia, previously said to CNN Business.
Lower-income households will suffer the most from the end of cheap Chinese e-commerce sites. About 48% of de minimis packages shipped to the poorest zip codes in the United States, while 22% were delivered to the richest ones, according to February research from UCLA and Yale economists.
But it’s not as if some US big fish will escape collateral damage. From the New York Times:
Sky Canaves, a principal analyst for retail and e-commerce at the research firm eMarketer, said ads from Temu and Shein were once “inescapable” on search, social media and applications. But that is changing…
Over a two-week period starting March 31, Temu spent 31% less on US daily advertising on Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, Snap, X (formerly Twitter) and YouTube compared with its average daily spending on those platforms in the previous 30 days, according to estimates from the market intelligence firm Sensor Tower. Shein’s daily advertising outlays on its social networks in the United States were down 19% over the same two weeks.
Temu and Shein, which had flooded Google in the United States with ads for the goods they sell, started to disappear from the platform in April. On April 5, Temu accounted for 19% of all US ads displayed on Google Shopping, but that figure dropped to zero a week later, according to research by the marketing firm Tinuiti. Shein went from about 20% in early April to zero by April 16.
And of course, the closing of this loophole will harm some small businesses. Resilc confirms: “I have several maker3 friends who get their parts this way. No mo.”
Trump rejects breaks for small businesses. This critically important tidbit is buried in an Axois story we’ll return to later in this post. The reason this matters is that the Chamber of Commerce sent want amounted to a Defcon 1 level alert, describing the need to give many waivers to small businesses. As we and many others have pointed out, they are vulnerable by generally having less in the way of funding reserves and borrowing capacity. And they are important to the health of the country, both by regularly being the driver of jobs growth, as well as often the makers of intermediate goods that are important to supply chains. From Axois:
The intrigue: Trump said that there would be no tariff exemptions for small businesses.
- “They’re not going to need it,” he said, despite a letter from the U.S. Chamber of Commerce that warned of catastrophic consequences for small businesses from the tariffs.
- The massive lobbying group >asked the administration to create a tariff exclusion process that could help some of the businesses.
- A separate group that lobbies on behalf of footwear companies also asked for industry relief earlier this week.
Financial Times talks up Chinese tariff evasion via Southeast Asia. Given that tariffs on goods from Southeast Asian countries are set to range from 10% for Singapore to 49% for Cambodia,4 trans-shipments, even if they could be executed without causing a world of hurt for buyers, would only provide some relief. And the pink paper does not suggest that low-tariff Singapore could be a smuggling route.
Note that there were some dismissive remarks in the Financial Times comments section. First (as you will see) the story relies entirely on the existence of tariff-evading schemes promoted in Chinese social media. These readers contend these ads are long standing and if anything have been running less frequently of late. Second, some in the international shipping industry say no reputable ship operator or buyer would take this sort of liability, which suggests this sort of tariff-busting (beyond the games played already) is not likely to become a large-scale activity.5 Nevertheless, from the lead story in the Financial Times, Chinese exporters ‘wash’ products in third countries to avoid Trump tariffs:
Chinese exporters are stepping up efforts to avoid tariffs imposed by US President Donald Trump by shipping their goods via third countries to conceal their true origin.
Chinese social media platforms are awash with adverts offering “place-of-origin washing”, while an inflow of goods from China has raised alarm in neighbouring countries wary of becoming staging posts for trade actually destined for the US.
The article mentioned Malaysia and quoted a source that depicted its customs as being lax. But other countries were tightening up. Again from the Financial Times:
Vietnam’s industry and trade ministry last month called on local trade associations, exporters and manufacturers to strengthen checks on origins of raw materials and input goods and to prevent the issuing of counterfeit certificates.
Thailand’s foreign trade department also last month unveiled measures to tighten origin checks on products bound for the US in order to prevent tariff evasion.
Trump continues “deal just around the corner” patter while signaling tariffs set to remain. Given how well that posturing worked out with the (immediately broken) Israel ceasefire, the Ukraine war negotiations, and now the Iran nuclear enrichment talks, one has to severely discount Trump “deal almost here” messaging. But Wall Street seems to be a true believer. Any excuse to buy a dip, one assumes.
If you read some of the stories with care, you can see not much has changed.
We had assumed Trump would keep tariffs on permanently, say at his present 10% default (unless he was able to wrest a very big economic and/or military concession from a particular country) and 25% tariffs against China even in the event of a major economic implosion. He has too much ego invested in his tariff scheme ever to retreat fully.
Axois confirmed our belief. From Trump says tariffs could be permanent, but strikes softer note on China:
President Trump said Sunday he would need to keep at least some tariffs on foreign goods in place to convince businesses to move production to the U.S.
Why it matters: It suggests that the historic levies on nearly all goods coming into America would remain in some form — even as the White House says it intends to strike trade deals with a slew of nations, including China.
- Such a development would be a huge blow for the economy. It can take years for companies to re-shore manufacturing — and doing so would likely result in higher costs for businesses and consumers.
What they’re saying: Trump told NBC’s “Meet the Press with Kristen Welker” that he would not rule out the possibility that the tariffs announced in recent weeks might stick.
- “No, I wouldn’t do that because if somebody thought they were going to come off the table, why would they build in the United States?,” Trump said in an interview that aired on Sunday.
- Trump said auto companies — including Toyota and Ford — have announced plans for additional U.S. plants in the wake of tariff policy.
Axois described Trump continuing his attack on toy-makers and parents:
Trump doubled down on those views on Sunday: “We don’t have to waste money on a trade deficit with China for things we don’t need, for junk that we don’t need.”
The Axois headline depicted Trump as taking a “softer” line on China. I have difficulty with this positioning. This is the same nonsense that Trump tried with Russia: depicting Putin as in desperate need of a deal because Russia was taking large battlefield losses and its economy was suffering. But Russia before and China now, and not Trump, are the judges of how eager they are to make concessions to the US. This is yet more patter for a US business audience, to try to signal that relief is not that far away when the Chinese have not indicated any change in stance, which is that the US has to drop tariffs (one assumes they don’t mean all but quite a lot) before China will talk. Again from Axois:
Yes, but: He conceded it was impractical to keep the tariffs on China at their current rates.
- “At some point, I’m going to lower them because otherwise, you could never do business with them. And they want to do business very much. Look, their economy is really doing badly. Their economy is collapsing.”
….
What to watch: Trump in recent days has tempered his tone on China, signaling willingness to strike a trade deal.
- “They want to make a deal. They want to make a deal very badly. We’ll see how that all turns out, but it’s got to be a fair deal,” Trump said.
Bloomberg showcases more Trump palaver in Trump Suggests Some Trade Deals May Come as Early as This Week:
President Donald Trump suggested that his administration could strike trade deals with some countries as soon as this week, offering the prospect of relief for trading partners seeking to avoid higher US import duties.
“It could very well be,” Trump told reporters on Sunday when asked whether any trade agreements were coming this week. He didn’t specify any countries.
“We’re negotiating with many countries, but at the end of this, I’ll set my own deals — because I set the deal, they don’t set the deal,” Trump said aboard Air Force One. “You keep asking the same question: ‘When will you agree?’ It’s up to me, it’s not up to them.”
There’s no evidence that The Don as Dealmaker King is working all that well.6 There were rumors that “a deal” was on the verge of being announced last week, with the supposed holdup the need for approval in the counterpart country. One would think that means legislative approval. Yours truly is not omniscient but I have yet to see any press accounts along those lines. Some wags though the country that was set to go first was India due to having very high duties on US car imports.
Consider a few examples:
This Japanese MP (whose name is Shinji Oguma) absolutely nails it, and reflects what pretty all countries in Asia are thinking: pic.twitter.com/U1jZahc5Sh
"When Japan negotiates with what [Trump] is saying it's akin to being extorted by a delinquent.
If Japan gives in, thinking…
— Arnaud Bertrand (@RnaudBertrand) April 18, 2025
Japan, the most likely country to bend the knee is not backing down when faced with extortion from the US.
Japan trade representative states that eliminating all new tariffs are non-negotiable. pic.twitter.com/v8qbW2j1GM
— Zhao DaShuai 东北进修🇨🇳 (@zhao_dashuai) April 20, 2025
Countries in Southeast Asia have no doubt taken note of the US’ very rough handling of top ally Japan. They also know that Vietnam went to the US quickly, with the offer of dropping all tariffs on US goods and was rebuffed. Although this may not have been the reason, Thailand cancelled a trip to the US for negotiations on April 237.
I wrote to a well-connected economist colleague, sputtering over a lead story in the Wall Street Journal story over the weekend, that depicted the US economy as “powering” through the Trump tariffs. Note that he’s been much more sanguine about where things might go, believing that there are good odds that Trump will pull out of his controlled flight into terrain. My e-mail, subject line “This is the last thing the US needs”:
See below as a lead story in the WSJ plus the market bounce will encourage Trump to stick with his tariffs even as the damage becomes irreversible (business closures, which are already starting).
You may have seen the Chamber of Commerce sounding a DefCon1 alert and pleading for (many many) specific waivers
This is an effect of the stockpiling, both the pulling demand forward at the consumer and business level, and the stockpiling postponing the onset of shortages.
You see at the FT that Buffett is still selling stocks.
And Trump is nowhere on negotiating. The Bangkok Post the US hsn’lt even set a time to deal with Thailand. From 3 days ago. The PM dropped some other initiatives as soon as the tariffs were announced and said the negotiations were her top priority.
https://www.bangkokpost.com/business/general/3014792/bank-of-thailand-cuts-rate-as-tariff-storm-darkens-outlook.
Nikkei reports SE Asian states have little to give the US save more LNG buys.
His reaction: “Yup.” He does tend to the laconic.
_____
1 Book publishers once had a healthy “mid list” business, of books on which they paid reasonable but not hefty advances for works they expected to sell 5,000 to 25,000 copies. That would in aggregate be enough for them to pay for themselves, plus a few could be expected to break out and become bestsellers.
For reasons I do not fathom (and it does not seem entirely due to e-publishing, since the original sharp falloff in printed books has substantially reversed itself), the mid-list business has collapsed.
Similarly, my impression is that off Broadway, which is also a source of movie scripts, has been suffering. I know personally a writer (and a good one) who had to quit producing plays (the writer would often have to help raise the funds) because it was too tenuous an existence (their transition to Los Angeles TV writing was initially successful even though it felt like a big step down, but that line of work has also become imperiled). If nothing else, ever levitating real estate rental costs would raise the cost of mounting a show.
2 More detail from the NBER paper:
In recent years, de minimis imports have exploded, fueled by streamlined customs processing, high tariffs, and an emergent type of international trade that ships directly to consumers purchasing through online retail platforms. For such transactions, online orders bypass domestic warehousing and are shipped directly to consumers (often referred to as “direct-to-consumer” or “drop ship” shipments).
To get a sense of de minimis’ rising importance, in 2023, these imports totaled $54.5 billion over 1 billion shipments, up from just $0.05 billion over 110 million shipments in 2012. When compared against relevant benchmarks, in 2023 de minimis imports were 7.3% of U.S. imports of consumer goods and 4.9% of E-commerce sales, a substantial increase from just 0.7% and 1.0%, respectively, from before the trade war.
De minimis is an integral logistics strategy of some of the world’s largest and fastest-growing retailers, such as Shein and Temu, that ship directly to consumers. Five legislative proposals to pare back §321 were recently introduced in Congress, and in September 2024 an Executive Order was issued to rescind the de minimis exemption on shipments containing products subject to 2018-19 tariffs.
The growth of low-value shipments and related policy concerns are a global phenomenon….
Who benefits from direct-to-consumer and de minimis trade? What are the aggregate and
distributional welfare consequences of potential changes to §321 trade policy?.. We rely on a novel
dataset encompassing the universe of shipments into the U.S. handled by three global carriers.
The maker culture is a contemporary subculture representing a technology-based extension of DIY culture[1] that intersects with hardware-oriented parts of hacker culture and revels in the creation of new devices as well as tinkering with existing ones. The maker culture in general supports open-source hardware. Typical interests enjoyed by the maker culture include engineering-oriented pursuits such as electronics, robotics, 3-D printing, and the use of computer numeric control tools, as well as more traditional activities such as metalworking, woodworking, and, mainly, its predecessor, traditional arts and crafts.
The subculture stresses a cut-and-paste approach to standardized hobbyist technologies, and encourages cookbook re-use of designs published on websites and maker-oriented publications.[2][3] There is a strong focus on using and learning practical skills and applying them to reference designs.[4] There is also growing work on equity and the maker culture.
I assume there is a profit, if modest, or at least cost recovery objective since Wikipedia reports on “maker faires” and participants can sell or license their works for payment.
4 Specifically: Cambodia 49%, Laos,48, %Vietnam 46%, Myanmar 44%, Thailand 36%, Indonesia 32%, Brunei and Malaysia 24%, the Philippines 17% and Singapore 10%
5 For instance:
Bounded Rationality
This is where the reputation of arbitrariness turns into a positive. Any nation suspected of wash knows fully well that they will also be targeted likewise. Individuals will always have an incentive to engage in such obfuscation, but the nations know that US administration will be looking at ∂import. Besides, the Chinese margins are thin.Washing the origin (just like money laundering) has significant costs. Money laundering works because the gain to the malefactor are immense (zero ability to spend to a 75-80% ability). Here, gains is minimal and the risk to the colluding nation is large. I cannot see this working.
ITD
If properly enforced a certificate of origin would sink that idea immediately. Shipping goods made in country A as being form country B only by rerouting is completely illegal. Good luck to the importer in the US who is taking an enormous risk. Plus the current administration will have to charge the same high tariffs from all countries in SEA thus destroying their economy completely. Any government in SEA that closes an eye to this will be hit very hard. You cannot play this on scale, it’s impossible. We do thousands of containers a year and no way you can risk such an illegal scheme.
6 Bloomberg, later in the linked story, repeated the Trump misrepresentation “his aides are having conversations with counterparts from China.” Global Times repeated (as in validated) social media rumors that Trump officials were making entreaties to China, but pointedly did not signal any change in China’s posture.
7 The Bangkok Post reports a remarkable amount of tap-dancing by the Prime Minister, such as admitting that no date for negotiations has yet been set (!!!), trying to claim that informal talks amount to secret negotiations (contradicting the Trump claim that he will be involved at least in the final contours of an agreement and is The Decider), that the agreement will ultimately be secret: “However, any secret collaboration cannot be disclosed as other countries which are in talks with the US will know and comparisons will be made and turmoil will follow,” she said.”
It is rather hard to see how there can be any secret collaboration given that no talks are actually taking place, just feelers. And Nikkei in a May 2 article argued that Southeast Asian countries don’t have much they can offer the US aside from LNG buys:
Asian economies are set to use imports of U.S. energy resources as leverage in negotiations with U.S. President Donald Trump to back down from his hefty “reciprocal” tariffs, but concessions in other areas like automobiles and agriculture could prove harder, observers say.
“Asian trading partners have been the most forthcoming in terms of doing the deals,” Scott Bessent, the U.S. Treasury Secretary and Trump’s chief tariff negotiator, said on Tuesday, singling out India, South Korea and Japan.
The U.S. announced in April that it would pause threatened tariffs for 90 days. With the exception of China, which has imposed retaliatory tariffs against the U.S. already, more than 100 countries and regions are rushing to negotiate in order to mitigate the possible fallout.
Negotiations have already begun with Vietnam, Japan, Indonesia, South Korea and India, and are set to increase in the coming weeks well ahead of the July 9 deadline.
Having said that, the PM is confident that the US and Thailand will reach an agreement before the 90 day pause on the 36% tariffs has been reached.
In reading this post, I was reminded of an article headline I saw the other day which gave me pause. It indicated that Trump’s tariffs are in a way America’s Brexit. Consider. Brexit and Trump’s tariffs are causing massive self-damage, both are being done with little or no pre-thought, both had no consideration to the direct and secondary effects on the economy, both had little preparations made to deal with the consequences as the deadline approached, etc. The UK was cutting itself off from the EU and Trump’s tariffs are having the effect of cutting off America from the rest of the world. I could go on but you get the idea. I do wonder if there are people in the Trump regime that saw Brexit being carried out years ago and thought to themselves that maybe that is what America needed – a sort of “Amexit” where America could stand aloof and all the other countries come begging to make their offerings for sanctions relief. I’m sure that there were a few in the British establishment that thought the same when Brexit was done.
In passing, listening to that Japanese leader’s speech it seems that there is a Japanese word for “Danegeld”.
This might be a very good analogy. I would only add that from the cheap seats observation post you are missing one really really big factor in this – Delusion or utter disassociation from the reality of life outside their own bubble. The people who floated Brexit honestly believed that more people loved being part of the EU than thought it was damaging their lives. They knew it was never going to pass, it was going to go away after the election. Clearly they were wrong.
It will become clearer as more time passes, but delusion seems to be fueling the tariffs and the lack of clear opposition to them here. As we know the Democrats honestly have no connection or understanding of more than half the citizens of the US and how angry they are over the trajectory of the country for the last probably fifty years. There are a whole lot of similar totally unconnected to reality delusions among the wealthy and powerful. It wasn’t just Trump that thought there would be a lot more bowing and scraping when these tariffs were raised. Many probably still think that the failure to do so is all for show. While some of it was the need to reassert dominance, they didn’t get that US policy and actions of those same last fifty years have been all to the benefit of a small group of people and left the country weak in multiple areas – including in ones they thought we were dominant in. And that other countries had been chafing under our stupid, arrogant and outright destructive big footing for long enough to really grow alternatives to dealing with us. But it is the weakness that they wrought in this country that will be the biggest shock to them. They honestly do not have a clue how much of the function of this country has been ‘outsourced’ for the benefit of a few.
Apparently Carville said the Dems should just sit tight and let Trump destroy himself–which he is so obviously doing–and they will win politically. That’s all they really care about.
So it will have to be other Republicans who stop this runaway train and it sounds like some are publicly starting to object and perhaps far more privately. This article talks about how the supply shock will hit home midsummer because it will take that long for the warehouses to empty.
https://prospect.org/blogs-and-newsletters/tap/2025-04-30-waiting-for-the-supply-shock/
As for Trump, how long before he starts calling an upset working class “deplorables”? Animal Farm was really Orwell’s best book.
Yes, but we have had a President Trump twice because they could not read the country, and thought their hideous candidates could pull it out. True most insiders knew Harris was a goner, but we got Harris because they didn’t nix a Biden run early on and honestly thought he would survive since the lawfare would kneecap Trump.
Unless and until the Republicans get that Trump no longer controls large numbers of Republicans AND that their big donors are dumping them (because of his policies) or that the sponsors don’t have enough post Congressional jobs once the voters do the dumping they aren’t going to be enough stepping up.
I do think that will happen before the Democrats even began to get a clue, but we are barely into the denial stage for enough Republicans to make a difference.
TYPO “powering” thought
Fixing, thanks.
same PM mentioned US Treasuries of over $1Trillion dollars held by Japan. worth noting.
Yes but the wee problem is that selling them would drive the yen higher when Japanese officials already regard the yen as too high.
They don’t have to convert the proceeds to Yen, they could buy gold, etc. Also the Yen is overly weak, food inflation is more than 7% year over year (Japan imports 60% of its food supply) with fresh food prices having risen more than 70% since 2010. On top of that, Japanese people can’t even afford to travel domestically. I live in Osaka and right now it’s Golden Week i.e. peak travel time for Japanese people other than the Obon festival, but seems to me it’s basically foreigners doing all the fun things, with citizens delegated to playing second fiddle.
IMHO, selling 1 trillion dollars in Treasuries amounts to an empty threat, because the Fed would step up to the plate and absorb the whole thing as part of QE Infinity.
*Sign*
If they sell Treasuries, they are selling dollars. That makes the yen higher relative to dollars. There is no way around that.
Can you explain this please so I understand? If they sell treasuries, they will receive dollars. Then they spend dollars to buy gold. how does this affect the yen level? Is this not how the chain of events would work out?
Japan sold Treasuries, which is selling bonds denominated in dollars. Perhaps they could keep the proceeds in dollars in banks that clear dollars (but these days, the dollar clearing has become heavily concentrated and even big international banks effectively clear via a very few US firms). The normal practice would be to sell Treasuries and receive yen. That lowers the value of the dollar and increase the price of yen.
The subsequent spending of the yen proceeds on gold does not undo the impact of the prior dollar sale for yen.
If they instead sold Treasuries, took the proceeds in dollars, and then used the proceeds to buy gold, that would still lower the value of the dollar, but potentially not as much v. the yen. However, the informational value of the transaction (independent of the “weight of the trade”) would also have a yen-increasing effect.
Thank you for that, Yves.
but all that as given, isnt there some theoretical point where the upside(sayin FU to US/Hegemon)outweighs the downsides?
i mean, one of the silliest things about current econ orthodoxy is the total divorce from the humanities…ie: not everything can be measured or put on a graph.
there are other, often strategic, considerations in play.
Putting aside the very dubious legality of his tariffs, and my real question is other than the self-serving nonsense that comes out of his mouth which doesn’t comport with reality, if trade deals were in the offing we would know. There are so many reporters covering this the odds of keeping negotiations quiet is functionally zero. Also, given his extreme need for adulation, they would be publishing pictures of people at negotiating tables bending the knee to him.
There is no plan! As Yves blogged, the complacency is overwhelming. If/when we start to have real problems one has to hope they can stop the tailspin when it starts. If will be swift and painful.
Trump or Americans for that matter don’t worry about international law or any law. Apart from a big market where you’re paid in printed money, what’s the purpose of bothering with America anymore?
My BFF moved to Japan 30 years ago and is so Nipponised that he’s very senior at Tokyo uni and in an area of expertise that encompasses international relations. That Japanese reaction was akin to a Pearl Harbour mk 2. Everyone was astonished.
BTW Japan is not posturing. Plus they even have a Chinese-Japanese electric vehicle hitting markets any day which is a major step forward beyond existing ones. US tariffs don’t scare them at all regarding this car. They’re using special Toyota war chest to loss-lead on it.
I don’t doubt it (re not posturing). I should have added that this degree of blunt disapproval is way way way outside the normal Japanese communications register, as in they must be off the charts outraged.
Thanks. I wonder if whatever faction(s) of the LDP are helping Toyota keep its stash away from prying eyes has factored in broader effects on the Yen. I’ve tried to do some homework on this Sino-Nippon tie up; even if it’s Japanese car know-how but Sino production at high scale, coupled with third party trade I can’t see how it ultimately counters your point that Japan gets pieces of paper that if sold will push up the Yen against some of its major trading partners.
Though my friend said there’s a real sense of fatality in Japan these days anyway. We’ve all read about the young men who’ve given up. The LDP is doing nothing notable to address their population crisis; at least during the first two lost decades they tried actively to do *something*. Now they give off vibes along the lines of “we’ll go out largely quietly but with an example of what made us great”.
Most of their (being re-activated) nuclear power plants and (perhaps more worryingly spent fuel reserves) were all placed near sea-level (useful for the water needed) in prefectures that (inevitably) were LDP held BUT were held by weaker LDP factions who didn’t have enough NIMBY power. What are the Japanese doing to move these plants upriver to avoid further Fukushimas? Precisely nothing. They are just pretending nothing is wrong since they’re paralysed with fear.
My friend’s son is billingual (Japanese mother) and I wonder if my BFF wants him to move to somewhere in the west that is not currently destroying itself in near future. Good luck on that score! Maybe he should have learnt Mandarin not English…..
“Maybe he should have learnt Mandarin not English…..”
Or, perhaps, studied Russian? Russkies are excellent carpenters. Pl. see, for example, the buildings of Kizhi Pogost in Karelia.
Trump wakes up everyday thinking that he is playing no limit poker with house money. He is basically going “all in” all the time with the American people because he knows muppets have no cards to play. Say what you want, at least Trump is never boring. Either way, there will some changes coming out of this. Now I am thinking AOC should step up to the plate and start wearing a white gown with the words “Impeach Orange Julius!!” every day, but no, tariffs or no tariffs we don’t even get that show. How disappointing.
#TrumpChangeYouCanBelieveIn
LOL. At first glance I saw #ChumpChangeYouCanBelieveIn
there will be damage done to trade relations with the Japanese and other Pacific rim countries. Where will blowbacks, retaliation happen. the PNW grows and exports 80% of the class of wheat known as soft white used for noodles mostly and confections, non-rising baked goods. the Japanese buy or tender on a weekly basis as do other importers. this is food mind you, not dolls or screens and there are alternatives to buying from the US, but these markets have taken all of post WW2 to develop. Wheat is already cheap, will buyers discount for imposed tariffs, yes. Will gov’t buying agencies shop somewhere else (read Australia), yes. the states of Washington, Oregon, and Idaho will suffer greatly from the stupidity of all this as will their farmers. Republican pols are mostly silent, democrats feeble. Commodity commissions are taking a FAFO attitude when they need to be screaming at the top of their lungs! Potatoes, Apples, Hops, Cherries, Beef, Wheat…are all at risk, thousands of jobs, farms, and businesses. Dumb and dumber!
I wonder if there is an idea in the Trump regime to get farmers to forgo the whole idea of export crops and concentrate on crops consumed at home. They would see this as a way of lowering food prices at home and make themselves popular. But for farmers it must be hell trying to plan just what to plant in the coming seasons.
“an idea in the Trump regime” – Rev, you can’t be serious. There’s only one idea, keep rolling out the nonsense plans to remake late 19th century America. I would seriously not be surprised to see an executive order abolishing the Federal Reserve. Checks and balances seem dead, so why not?
Abolish the Federal Reserve? Would that be such a bad idea? The fact that it was created on 23rd December by Woodrow Wilson should say something. Cut the banks out entirely and have only the Federal government have these responsibilities. After all, ‘the Federal Reserve Banks are set up like private corporations. Member banks hold stock in the Federal Reserve Banks and earn dividends’ Only trouble is that any new actual Federal Reserve would be treated by both the Dems and Repubs as their new play toy.
I should note too that the Federal Reserve was created ‘after a series of financial panics led to the desire for central control of the monetary system in order to alleviate financial crises.’ But only 13 years after their creation you had the Great Depression so maybe they weren’t really good at their jobs. :)
Yes it would be because before that, JP Morgan was bailing out the banking system on the regular occasion of bank runs, and they got too big for him to handle.
And in the Great Depression, even the Fed was not up to the task. My maternal grandparents had their money in three banks. They lost everything in 2 of them and eventually got 3 cents on the dollar in the third. They lost their home as a result.
So be careful what you wish for. Destroying things wantonly with no Plan B is a shitty idea.
Excellent point, Yves.
Thanks for your effort posts since Lambert left.
Too many rich guys work there to be seen as illegitimate. It’s a playground to gain a fancy title much like coursus honorum.
The issues on the domestic side is largely about what they view as legitimate. Except for the “independence,” the Federal Reserve is safe.
The Romans where sweating blood on their cursus honorum…
I am becoming more and more convinced that Trump doesn’t even know what tariffs are. It seems like he believes a tariff is a magic spell that forces foreign countries to give your country money.
I think you’re right. He seems to think tariffs are paid by foreigners, rather than by American citizens. The tariffs are taxes paid by the American manufacturers who are importing stuff. They may or may not be able to recover that extra expense from their customers, but that means they (the customers) are paying the tax. It’s true it reduces demand for imported goods, but when the imported good can’t be made or produced in this country nobody has a choice. I think China is going to tighten their belt and simply not sell anything in/to the U.S. After all, they were used to starvation until fifty years ago. They won’t let anyone starve now (will that be true of America?), and they are much better organized to cooperate than we are.
There are some remarkable details in this post. Thanks.
First, “Of course, Trump and his ilk would never consider what neoliberalism has done to fiction publishing and the theater in the US, and that the endless milking of action franchises has turned off a lot of once-loyal movie viewers.”
One reason publishing has trouble with midlist and older books was that publishers lost a case on valuation of inventory. I cannot (using DuckDuckGo) find the name of the case. The result is that publishers just don’t keep books around as much as they used to. The second problem is the blockbuster mentality, which goes back to the 1990s. This mentality affects books and films.
From a longer article that I researched: “It used to be that the first book earned a modest advance, then you would build an audience over time and break even on the third or fourth book,” Morgan Entrekin, the publisher of Grove/Atlantic, told The New York Times. “Now the first book is expected to land a huge advance and huge sales…. Now we see a novelist selling 9,000 hardcovers and 15,000 paperbacks, and they see themselves as a failure (Bureau of Labor Statistics).”
That idea of nurturing careers is over. Obviously, it had drawbacks, when publishers took time to develop the careers of snoozy types like John Updike. Now, though, plenty of people think that they are busting into publishing and tearing down the patriarchy — but it turns out that there is no there there.
The result is that many writers simply no longer have a career in books or theater. We won’t even mention musicians! There are lots of instant successes from the latest (uniform) products of MFA programs. Then those writers / playwrights / filmmakers go on to teach in the world-renowed MFA program at Northern South Dakota University, Blueberry Muffin Campus. So there is endless churning.
The long-needed and well-deserved strikes by the Writers Guild and Sag-Aftra against the Hollywood establishment and its skeezy practices have had downstream effects: Stagnation. Don’t call your agent. Or: Do call your agent to find out if he has been laid off.
Second, for those of you who enjoy a good footnote, and who doesn’t have a footnote fetish?, endnote 1 gives more details worth considering about books, film, and theater — in short, the current disaster that passes for U.S. culture. And I won’t mention woke pretentiousness as a factor. Or self-censorship. Or being a painter — and having to deal with the general mess that is the world of art galleries.
And speaking of one’s foot:
Third, footwear! Wowsers. Let’s follow footwear as a symptom. Are any shoes still made in the U S of A? When I lived in Chicago, I used to buy Redwing Boots, which aren’t cheap but are built to last and made in the US of A. That’s it, so far as I know for U.S. shoe production. I also bought other traditional men’s brands — only to find Made in China / Made in India inside.
Fourth: That video of Japanese politico Shinji Oguma is a must. The Japanese don’t only speak in haiku, eh?
I’m off to work on a libretto for an opera. (That’s how I’ll earn the euros for that snazzy villa in Tuscany-landia, ne.)
I think technology has a lot more to do with changes in the movie industry and likely true of publishing as well. Digital has broken former business models while enhancing those–i.e. Marvel movies–which are little more than technological spectacles plus banter to give the actors something to do.
The other day I checked out a coffee table book that brought back what one would once find in our now disappeared Barnes and Noble–good reproductions printed on quality coated paper. On the back it said Made in China.
I think New Balance still makes its shoes in the U.S. I have fond memories of my Redwing steel toed loggers that outlasted my body’s ability to do heavy work. I have no idea where they’re made now.
As for film entertainment, I watch very little made in America any more. Since Covid I avoid crowded indoor spaces so I stream and have a dvd collection. There are several inexpensive platforms that specialize in non-U.S. fare: MHz (primarily continental Europe), Acorn TV and BritBox (primarily from U.K. and other Anglophone countries) and a number of others. Kanopy, free to library card holders in some areas, has a great deal of content from all over the world. I don’t know if and how tariffs might be applied to foreign productions available online.
New Balance and Red Wing both still make shoes domestically. Whether working class people pay for them is another question; they seem to do well with the workwear cosplay type.
Handmade workboots:
https://whitesboots.com/
Back when I was working in the woods… high school and college… a hand made pair of White’s Smokejumper boots was the bomb. If you were on a fire crew having a pair of White’s was a big deal. I still have mine ~45 years later.
Best foot gear I have ever owned. Have had them resoled twice.
DJG, Reality Czar: One reason publishing has trouble with midlist and older books was that publishers lost a case on valuation of inventory. I cannot (using DuckDuckGo) find the name of the case.
You’re thinking of Thor Power Tool Company v. Commissioner of Internal Revenue (1979).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thor_Power_Tool_Co._v._Commissioner
Before this U.S. Supreme Court decision, publishers could write down the value of unsold books, allowing them to keep midlist and backlist titles in stock longer. The decision required proof of depreciation, making it less tax-punitive if publishers actively destroyed unsold books than kept them in inventory.
Needless to say, U.S. publishers became reluctant to keep older, less popular books in print, and to retain a midlist.
Carolinian: I think technology has a lot more to do with changes in the movie industry and likely true of publishing as well. Digital has broken former business models while enhancing those–i.e. Marvel movies–which are little more than technological spectacles plus banter to give the actors something to do.
No. Stupid has been in the water and air in the US for a lot longer than Trump or the last quarter-century’s digital economy, cf the Thor Power Tools decision, 1950s-era McCarthyism, Vietnam, Reaganism — do I need to go on? — and so most American ‘culture’ has always reflected that, including most of the movies.
It’s just all coming home to roost ‘gradually, then suddenly.”
“It’s just all coming home to roost ‘gradually, then suddenly.”
As it plays out at the moment the roost is going to happen in Europe. No US investment, no cash, no jobs.
The “movie job wunder” in places like Spain was due to US´s overseas production model.
My assumption is that US products have such an overwhelming might that even with most done back in the states for box office it won´t matter.
I haven´t been able to read the box-office stats of the guy I posted below.
But without US products you have no movie theatres and no serious streaming content in Europe.
Disney had one German production to my knowledge. Similar is true for Apple. The others are not much better.
The only ones who survive as always are state TV. Who do what they have been doing since the early days simply due to taxes worth 4bn and more annually.
p.s. One more question lingering, does it affect co-productions. And what about the revenue systems.
The movie industry was always just that–an industry. It’s the movie business that has changed because of the computer age.
And the more artistically inclined filmmakers were always on the margins. After all Citizen Kane–often cited as the greatest movie ever made–was not a commercial success (for a variety of reasons).
In the 20th century the UK government devoted tax revenues to keep the British film industry alive. This changed with Blair, who was more devoted to the Americans than any previous PM.
Blair’s government changed the rules so that US movies could receive UK funds and tax incentives – as a result Hollywood relocated not only production but post production (editing, sound design, music) to London.
This has been a Very Bad Thing for British cinema, and a windfall for the studios.
I don’t think Trump’s tarrifs will affect independent production worldwide, and if they hurt the Hollywood Movie Cartel I am all in favour.
I think the French have a much better approach – they subsidise local cinemas as well as films. The domestic film industry is still very vibrant – with many films made purely for local consumption, not award bait.
Yes, the French CNC model is very good.
But it’s not a subsidy, it’s a consumption tax.
French taxpayers don’t get charged anything, and a portion of revenue from exhibitors showing Hollywood blockbusters goes back into French cinema.
Regarding the Trump tariffs on foreign films, Yves is correct to ask about their scope w.r.t. domestic film production.
Watch the credits for any recent Hollywood production full of CGI, and you may see dozens of small production companies in Korea, India, Eastern Europe, etc. etc.
Unless we’re talking about Pixar or productions contracting with Lucasfilm, most of the CG work is outsourced, and largely overseas.
Hollywood has benefited from protectionist policies in the past, but it wasn’t offshoring tons of work.
What would you regard as independent?
The term has changed so much over the years.
What you write reminds a little bit of GB until the late 1960s.
The audio commentary for John Guillermin´s “Blue Max” is not bad, focused on Goldsmith´s score, but they also mention that once tax breaks for productions were abandoned it was the end of that era of huge British co-productions.
fwiw:
“Everyone Loses”: Trump’s Movie Tariffs Plan Catches Hollywood Off Guard
A levy punishing runaway productions may make it more expensive to shoot abroad, but it won’t make it any cheaper to shoot movies in the United States.
by Scott Roxborough (Europe Bureau Chief)
https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/business/business-news/trump-movie-tariffs-plan-catches-hollywood-off-guard-1236207369/
“(…)
The main force driving runway production is the bottom line. With national tax incentives, lower costs for local crews and, in some territories, direct production subsidies for co-productions, shooting a film in Vancouver, Queensland or in Sofia, Bulgaria can be 40 to 60 percent cheaper than making the same film in L.A.
“Once you’ve shot in these places — the Czech Republic, Malta, Australia, New Zealand — you realize the quality is good, it’s actually quite cheap and the tax credits work really, really well,” says Simon Williams, a film financier with London-based group Ashland Hill Finance.
A levy punishing runaway productions may make it more expensive to shoot abroad, but it won’t make it any cheaper to shoot movies in the United States. For independent movies, notes one veteran producer, a 100 percent tariff “means most of those films just won’t get made.”
(…)”
Jon Voight and friends? I don´t really buy that. More as diversonary front. But then, anything is possible.
Trump Ambassador Jon Voight Unveils His Plan to “Make Hollywood Great Again”
The ‘Midnight Cowboy’ and ‘Heat’ actor — also a “special ambassador” to the entertainment industry for the White House — presented a plan to return more production to U.S. shores after meeting with industry stakeholders.
https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/business/business-news/trump-jon-voight-unveils-hollywood-movies-tariffs-1236207690/
“Are any shoes still made in the U S of A?”
Allen Edmonds, except for some of the more casual offerings (e.g., ridiculous “sneakers”).
Expensive but they last forever.
For lists of American-made products:
https://www.usalovelist.com/american-made-mens-dress-shoes/
Even before tariffs, American-made products were more expensive (duh!), but, in general, of higher quality. You’ll note that some of these use imported materials…
There are also Origin boots, made in Maine. Also expensive and long lasting. I’ve had my pair for a few years now and they’ve held up nicely. They are not for the faint of heart – no lightweight walking shoe, these. You will get a good workout sporting these for a day.
Not sure if they have similar deals all the time, but I bought mine for $75 at the pro shop in Farmington, ME, which is less than 25% of the going rate. Pretty sure they were overstock and not seconds.
AE’s are kind of dorky, but they last forever, definitely not as stylish as other brands. My husband has wide feet and the widths help keep them in good shape. Expensive but are worth resoling and have the leather repair. He has a few pairs that are at least 10 years old.
He has a pair that got handed down to my 17 year old when he was 15 for formal events (formal Mass dress code, dances, etc.) but he outgrew them within the year and was very hard on them.
Allen Edmonds cut a lot of their dress models in favor of the dress-casual trend. Which meant rubber soles and generally non-domestic. They seem to have tried bringing back some legacy domestic models but the audience that has no qualms paying for $300-400 dress shoes is probably not interested anymore. And those with money to spend look elsewhere given Edmonds’ QC slips throughout the years.
On sale for say $200-250, acceptable; at full retail $425? Still a tier below other brands. Origin matters little when you’re looking for a certain style/look.
But as you mentioned, width is a big thing that’s likely keeping them in play. Not everyone offers wide (wide) sizes.
DJG, I would guess this 1980 decision is the one:
https://www.csmonitor.com/1980/1027/102752.html
IMOR. Thanks. Michaelmas also mentions the Thor decision above in this thread.
This synthesis (from the 1980 article you link to) is what has come to pass: “Many publishers say the IRS rule is, aside from the immediate necessity to pay any back taxes owed the government: (1) reducing the number of new books published; (2) reducing the size of press runs, with a view to making sure inventories are kept to a minimum; (3) keeping more so-called “new” authors from the marketplace because publishing their work is largely a risk.”
Then throw in predatory pricing by Amazon, which the government has never been willing to penalize…
Remember Knapp work Shoes?
I’m fairly certain that Alden Shoes are still made in Middleborough, Maine.
It’s definitely Hollywood that’s killing Hollywood. They’re just making a lot of bad, overpriced movies.
And Americans don’t even watch foreign films that much, I think they’re like 1% of the domestic box office.
Partly that. I said in a comment that you ignore what Trump says but what he does. In the election last year Hollywood really went after him so you would think that he would burn them to the ground. Not so. Instead he wants to make Hollywood Great Again and kill any opposition. That is a deep state policy which for many decades has sought to kill film production in other countries leaving only American ones on offer to spread their messages. Maybe the idea is to return to those glory days. But as you pointed out, modern Hollywood films – and actors – are overpriced junk but still keep on getting churned out no matter how many hundreds of billions that they might lose. I believe that most films are done overseas because of the sky high prices in Hollywood and Canada even would be out (where the Stargate TV series was filmed for example). And I don’t think that Chinese investors will be putting any more money into American films. It’s going to be a train wreck.
What Afro is saying rings true to me: very little foreign production makes it to the USA — very often, movies have to be “remade” (with North American actors and scenario revisions) to be distributed there (and this has been the case since the 1930s!)
The fact is that for several decades now cinematographies from other countries have been slowly supplanting Hollywood in the rest of the world: Bollywood superproductions, Brazilian telenovelas and their Turkish equivalents, and now Chinese movies or South Korean series. Of course, this all takes place in Asia, Africa, Latin America, and partly Europe, so it is invisible from the USA.
Not so much MAGA as NMH – Not Made Here.
I dunno. Look at the Game of Thrones HBO series. Lotta foreign actors and shot nearly entirely overseas. So catering, equipment rentals, other local crew all foreign paid.
Check out PBS. A good chunk of their programming comes from England.
Trump’s statement was merely digging a deeper hole on the dumb. And re PBS apparently Trump has no power to get rid of them or NPR unless Congress defunds the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and Congress is still reluctant to do that. They don’t want to be caught in the act killing Big Bird.
The irony is that a lot of foreign films now ape their US counterparts. Having won the culture war Trump now wants the US to declare defeat or at least indifference to the rest of the world.
A lot of the Mantelpiece Theatre productions are joint between the Beeb and PBS in Boston.
BTW, one of the better commentators on the decline of modern culcha, IMHO, is Ted Gioia, who has a substack called The Honest Broker. It’s one of very few online outlets I spend any simolians on (along with my fundraising donations to NC, of course…)
I think you have to live in a major city to have a chance to see a foreign film screened theatrically. But Amazon carries a fair number of foreign language films and television shows, and access to foreign film is why I subscribe to the Criterion Channel. The most interesting films today, in my opinion, come from other countries. Heck, the Tubi free cable channel has foreign content, I’m currently watching “3 Body”, the Chinese series adaptation of “The Three Body Problem”, a work of Chinese science fiction.
Many of the “small” movies worth seeing now come from England including the BBC which is still good for something. I’d say British and German and Spanish cinema scenes have thrived while the once prominent French and Italian have faded. But perhaps that’s just what we get here.
Overseas and increasingly in Georgia and New Mexico. Presumably tax incentives and other bennies have a lot to do with this.
The tariffs could actually turn the industry away from the comic book remake after remake cycle. It was dependent on overseas box office.
So there will be struggles with companies used to having and covering more overhead, but I’m not going to say it won’t get interesting creatively.
A lot of (Indies e.g.) good/successful stuff makes more money overseas than in domestic territories.
Not sure DT is aware of this.
Netflix e.g. has crafted its huge content aggregator for a global audience with 300M subscribers 80M of which are US:
Netflix Statistics 2025 (Latest Data)
“As of 2025, Netflix has over 301.6 million subscribers worldwide.
More than 81.44 million Netflix users are from the United States.
In 2024, Netflix generated $39 billion in revenue and expects to earn $10.42 billion in Q1 2025.
It is the second most popular SVOD platform in the U.S., holding a 21% market share.
More than one-third of Netflix users are Millennials.
In Q4 2024, Netflix reported a net income of $1.87 billion.”
fwiw the top 2024 box-office list
https://www.boxofficemojo.com/year/2024/?ref_=bo_yl_table_2
top 10:
#1 Inside Out 2
Domestic (38,4%)
$652,980,194
International (61,6%)
$1,045,883,622
Worldwide
$1,698,863,816
2# Deadpool & Wolverine
Domestic (47,6%)
$636,745,858
International (52,4%)
$701,327,787
Worldwide
$1,338,073,645
#3 Wicked
Domestic (62,8%)
$473,231,120
International (37,2%)
$280,675,349
Worldwide
$753,906,469
#4 Moana 2
Domestic (43,5%)
$460,405,297
International (56,5%)
$598,836,867
Worldwide
$1,059,242,164
#5 Despicable Me 4
Domestic (37,2%)
$361,004,205
International (62,8%)
$608,542,953
Worldwide
$969,547,158
#6 Beetlejuice Beetlejuice
Domestic (65,1%)
$294,100,435
International (34,9%)
$157,800,000
Worldwide
$451,900,435
#7 Dune: Part Two
Domestic (39,5%)
$282,144,358
International (60,5%)
$432,500,000
Worldwide
$714,644,358
#8 Twisters
Domestic (71,9%)
$267,762,265
International (28,1%)
$104,500,000
Worldwide
$372,262,265
#9 Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire
Domestic (34,3%)
$196,350,016
International (65,7%)
$375,500,000
Worldwide
$571,850,016
#10 Kung Fu Panda 4
Domestic (35,3%)
$193,590,620
International (64,7%)
$354,098,872
Worldwide
$547,689,492
With PR costs equal production cost or higher these tentpoles need overseas revenue to break even.
And for studios to do things like the new Paul Thomas Anderson or the new Maggie Gyllenhaal they need the popcorn movie money. So yes it is an industry but with all the weaknesses and cross dependencies attached industries do.
This same logic applies all the way down the rankings, too. Many domestic flops also end up at least breaking even when they go into distribution overseas. I believe US firms like Warner have a stake in some overseas theater chains, but mostly that revenue will have to find its way back to Hollywood via foreign exhibitors.
If foreign distributors and exhibitors get caught up in the trade war, it could make the difference between mediocre Hollywood films breaking even, vs. those same films ending up in the red.
p.s. And if we pity/complain about the demise of the US ship-building industry and lack and demise of skill and craftsmanship and its´ tradition same is true for movie business.
Without an industry of that size you won´t have that kind of skill set among those countless artists and artisans that evolve around making a picture like Dune 2 as much as some people might hate it. But those same technicians will do outstanding work in some entirely different project.
In order to fly to the moon NASA needed countless failures. Same with movies.
I said it before, Welles complained bitterly about New Hollywood because it erased the certain small spaces where people like him could work with limited budgets. As much as trickle down was nonsese on a national scale it is how artists vs. the industry works.
Without an industry no income that can feed a family. That´s the issue in Germany e.g. which is why here artists might be regarded as elite but at the same time are among the poorest section of academically trained.
I remember stories 20 years ago when some US major pic failed financing a few days before production started in Germany after a financial backer pulled out in the last moment countless lives were in shatters. Make-up artists, production designers, composers, actors were devastated because they had built part of their annual budget on that one production.
Without an industry of that size you won´t have that kind of skill set among those countless artists and artisans that evolve around making a picture like Dune 2
The only thing the Americans have are the investors with the deep pockets at this point. We’re going to miss those.
Otherwise —
[1] That industry doesn’t have to be in the US, as to a large extent it isn’t now. You mention Dune 2 and, aside from the live scenes done in Jordan, Abu Dhabi, and the Italy, its scenes on sound stages and post-production were done in Budapest, Hungary. Similarly, the Marvel movies, like the Mission Impossible series and others, have largely been done at UK studios, live and post-production.
[2] Then, too, the industry doesn’t have to be ‘that size.’ In fact, it won’t be: ‘the skill set among those countless artists and artisans’ is as dead as the silent movies. Given the tsunami of AI tools and image-making & processing technologies now hitting, Hollywood’s legions of assistant this and that have largely become unnecessary and unemployed since the streaming bubble ended (and this is what Trump has picked up a fag-end of news about and is reacting to). Even in the UK there are assistant DPs now stacking shelves at Lidls.
In other words, just like in theory manufacturing could be brought back but the old manufacturing jobs are never coming back in practice because of the new technologies, so the old Hollywood industry is similarly not returning given the new technologies.
[3] Re. Yves’ point about entirely foreign casts in productions like A Game of Thrones, it’s striking nowadays that when Hollywood makes a biopic about, for example, Whitney Houston it casts a Brit to play Whitney (and makes her wear cosmetic teeth to hide her English ones). Much the acting talent I see in US films and TV ever since The Wire are Brits doing American accents, alongside Australians and of course Australians. They’re cheaper, they’ve gone to acting school, they’ve done real theater, and they can all do American accents.
Yes, it is called the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.
“Mr. Trump”
Is it normal for Japanese MPs to refer to the US President as mister?
Hey, it’s challenging to tackle the twin budget and trade deficits while retaining the strong USD and reserve currency status without the point one per cent slowing down their wealth accumulation.
On a more serious note, at least a few republican representatives have said they will vote to remove the emergency provisions that our president exploits to usurp the tariff authority given to congress by the constitution. One can hope, that hasn’t been tariffed (yet).
Oh, the US movie industry is dying? What about trying to create something new for a change?
I’m really no expert for the movie industry, but… 86 years, 78 years, 69 years, in an industrial sector undergoing major technological changes.
Well done, Mr. Trump. A most impressive selection of talent.
I recall Stallone criticising Bruce Willis for “not working hard enough”.
Well, Pulp Fiction, The Fifth Element, The Sixth Sense versus … a pile of crap squeezed out with much grunting.
I recently saw parts of Bob Zemeckis’s Death Becomes Her and, while the movie itself did absolutely nothing for me with all special effects tricks, all now dated, I stayed to watch the quarter-hour I did because I was so struck by Bruce Willis playing totally against type and what a surprisingly good actor he could be.
(Well, also by how Isabella Rossellini seemed like a special effect herself, as in her prime she was such a great beauty, even granted all the movie cosmetic magic.)
Come to think of it, I guess in that sense Willis could have done more acting and worked harder, and less of the actioners. But who is Stallone to criticize?
Willis was also fantastic in Nobody’s Fool.
He was fantastic in Hudson Hawk!
Unfortunately here the major data is behind the paywall.
A Trade War Could Be A Disaster…For Hollywood
The Tariff War Will be Digitized
Apr 08
https://entertainment.substack.com/p/a-trade-war-could-be-a-disasterfor#footnote-1-160878513
How the Trade Wars Could Decimate Substackers and the Creator Economy
The Tariff War Will be Digitized
Apr 09
https://entertainment.substack.com/p/how-the-trade-wars-could-decimate-big-tech-apple-amazon-substack-tariffs-trump-youtube
I wanted to post this back in April but didn´t.
I assume a new post will follow.
fwiw this quickly
https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/movies/movie-news/can-trumps-movie-tariff-actually-work-1236207053/
https://variety.com/2025/film/global/trump-tariffs-films-produced-outside-us-reactions-europe-1236386675/
Oguma recommends that his colleague watch the Roy Cohn documentary to gain insight into what kind of person ‘Mr. Trump’ is. Here was a man whose heart was black as coal who mentored Trump. This is the first mention of Trump’s early lawyer that I have heard in some time. Americans are so busy navel-gazing it would be a non-American who cited the significance of this relationship. Thank you Minister Oguma.
Fwiw, Whitney Webb mentions Roy Cohn quite a bit in “One Nation under Blackmail”.
“his controlled flight into terrain.”
I always figured there would be hell to pay by the American people when our elites finally figured out what they had done to our country, but Trump’s reaction has the benefit of being unique. It’s like after forty years of slow boiling the American public like a frog, he’s decided to see if the frog is now done by pretending it’s pasta and throwing it at the fridge door. Bravo, President Trump! The frog salutes you!
“Trump said auto companies — including Toyota and Ford — have announced plans for additional U.S. plants in the wake of tariff policy.”
I only found one plant each, each opening in 2025, Toyota’s to ‘assemble lithium batteries’, Ford’s to produce F-150 Lightning electric trucks. Opening this year, the planning and construction of these would have been undertaken long ago, without regard to Trump’s 2024 reelection or his tariff scheme as announced (but perhaps with one eye on T. and tariffs in a general way, and liely somewhat subsidized with taxpayer dollars as part of the Biden admin’s EV push.). Let’s see what the hiring numbers look like.
“Such a development would be a huge blow for the economy. It can take years for companies to re-shore manufacturing — and doing so would likely result in higher costs for businesses and consumers.”
Yes that’s the point. Everyone is doomed with the current scheme of things so I really dont understand the complaints with the tariffs.
Carving Trump out of the equasion completely, because a) we know, or should know by now, not to believe a single thing he says, and b) we know, or should know by now, that magical thinking is what he does. I won’t even mention the fact that a case can be made Trump has always been a pretty bad “dealmaker”, with all his major successes basically handed to him on a silver platter (e.g. by his daddy, by Obama, etc.).
There are two groups of people who interest me in this entire tarriff kerfuffle.
One – Trump’s advisors. For instance, the Soros boy running Treasury (and he’d spent, what, decades working in the Soros fund??), Lutnick at Commerce was at Cantor Fitzgerald for most of his adult life, I think. These people should have some basic degree of understanding what is happening, and what is likely to happen, even after adjusting for a fact that there are many “smart stupid” Wall Street guys out there. Or even “dumb stupid”, I’ve worked for a few of those.
Is it the case of blind sycophancy? Or do these people have a “cunning plan”, probably lifted from Andrew Mellon, to reset the American economy in favor of large capital (“liquidate the labor, liquidate stocks”, et cetera)? Or are they actually the “dumb stupid” Wall Street guys who have not a clue in the world?
Two – the oligarchs. All seven hundred of them, per Forbes’ list of billionaires by country. Ok, minus the Walmart fortune heirs, they seem to have checked out completely a long time ago. They’re watching the Titanic steam towards the iceberg, and some of them (e.g. Buffett) are even mildly tut-tutting in public, or sending moderately worded letters, but no-one, as far as I can tell, is actually DOING anything. Like, oh, I don’t know, sitting Trump down and telling him to stop. Or dangling a check in front of every single congresscritter and telling them to go “sic’em boy”. Or whatever else.
So again – are we dealing with a simple case of complacency? Do they believe that whatever happens, they themselves will “muddle through somehow” (unofficial French army motto pre-WW1), and it’s everyone else that will suffer instead? [Variation of what you see on Wall Street – I know this security is manure, but I will be the first to trade out of it before anyone else when the crisis hits…] Or maybe if things get really bad, the Fed will magically rescue them, so who cares? Do they WANT an Andrew Mellon type scenario, figuring they can restructure the economy further in their favor? Or have they simply grown so fat, lazy and incompetent, that they haven’t a clue how to pressure a president anymore?
Trump is being enabled, and Trump is not being actively opposed, as I would define said. In fact, more than a few oligarchs must be actively enabling him. That, to me, is the insane part of this, that we either really do live in the stupidest timeline, or that we’ve come to the point where substantive portions of the economic elite want a hard “mellonite” reset. Because that will surely end well.
Because that will surely end well (for them).
“There are, however, even more direct indications that a first-class political issue is at stake here. In the great depression in the 1930s, big business consistently opposed experiments for increasing employment by government spending in all countries, except Nazi Germany. This was to be clearly seen in the USA (opposition to the New Deal), in France (the Blum experiment), and in Germany before Hitler. The attitude is not easy to explain. Clearly, higher output and employment benefit not only workers but entrepreneurs as well, because the latter’s profits rise. And the policy of full employment outlined above does not encroach upon profits because it does not involve any additional taxation. The entrepreneurs in the slump are longing for a boom; why do they not gladly accept the synthetic boom which the government is able to offer them? It is this difficult and fascinating question with which we intend to deal in this article.
The reasons for the opposition of the ‘industrial leaders’ to full employment achieved by government spending may be subdivided into three categories: (i) dislike of government interference in the problem of employment as such; (ii) dislike of the direction of government spending (publicinvestment and subsidizing consumption); (iii) dislike of the social and political changes resulting from the maintenance of full employment.”
And,
“One of the important functions of fascism, as typified by the Nazi system, was to remove capitalist objections to full employment. The dislike of government spending policy as such is overcome under fascism by the fact that the state machinery is under the direct control of a partnership of big business with fascism. The necessity for the myth of ‘sound finance’, which served to prevent the government from offsetting a confidence crisis by spending, is removed. In a democracy, one does not know what the next government will be like. Under fascism there is no next government.
The dislike of government spending, whether on public investment or consumption, is overcome by concentrating government expenditure on armaments. Finally, ‘discipline in the factories’ and ‘political stability’ under full employment are maintained by the ‘new order’, which ranges from suppression of the trade unions to the concentration camp. Political pressure replaces the economic pressure of unemployment.” (Kalecki, 1943)
Between what is happening in Europe, Ukraine to EU, and what is happening in Gaza, and our “governing elite” responses to both, we have been living with full bore Fascism since Scalia selected Shrub as President and no one resisted.
I have to say I approve of at least some level of tariff to replace de mininis. I used to make custom bass guitar pickups, and it always chapped my ass that everything I sent overseas got tariffed (and some of it quite ferociously, i think 100% in Brazil) but stuff from my competitors in China came in free, and their government even helped with the shipping.
The Hollywood tariffs are about what is called “run-away production”.
The major US studios produce lots of content for US consumption in foreign nations for:
– currency exchange benefits (ie, Canadian dollar is cheaper)
– lower cost/non-union crews
– and finally, actual direct payments from the foreign states to subsidize local production. ie, the foreign states are creating their own local film/tv production industries by paying US studios kickbacks of 35%+ to bring the work there.
This is why you began to see Toronto standing in for NYC; Vancouver for Chicago, etc. (if you looked very closely!). Started happening in the ’90s (or earlier) for simple currency exchange benefits. You could get $1US of work for $1CAD which represented about a 20-30% discount.
Around 2000, the British Commonwealth countries started offering the US studios generous “tax credits” of anywhere from 25-60% of a show’s total spend in the locale to film and do post production work there. US jobs in those sectors have declined steadily since then, with many hundreds if not thousands of US citizens relocating to those tax credit locations (Vancouver, New Zealand, Australia, Toronto, Montreal, UK, Ireland) for work. In many cases the local talent pool could never have even accomplished the work without the infusion of US know-how and manpower.
This is a case, however, where the US industry still exists to the degree where it can be revived.
The beneficiaries of the current system of foreign tax credits are the $multi-billion film/TV production studios’ bottom lines; the victims are largely working class US tradesmen and artisans.
InquiringMind: This is a case, however, where the US industry still exists to the degree where it can be revived.
No. it cannot. It’s gone already.
Just as Trump is/was cluelessly talking about bringing back manufacturing employment, and in theory manufacturing might be brought back to the US but the old levels of manufacturing employment will never return because the new automation technologies are so advanced that manufacturing employment will never be but a small fraction of what it was, so the old Hollywood industry is similarly not returning.
All those legions of ‘working class US tradesmen and artisans’ are surplus to requirements given the tsunami of new AI-assisted image-making and processing technologies now hitting. Really, it’s more advanced in the film and video industry because it’s been hitting for the last decade now: one person can do what ten used to do in many cases, often in a fraction of the time.
I work on set and in post. I have hundreds of resumes categorized by craft sitting in folders. They are all ready to go to work.
Productions all across north america ship their grip/electrical equipment/props/set dec/costumes from warehouses in LA…picture cars are in lots all around the BUR airport…it’s all still here & ready to go.
In another 5-10 years, yeah, it probably won’t be.
I wasn’t counting on Trump to make a difference here…am kind of surprised that he weighed in on it…but I guess it hits the right quadrants: Studios will cry and scream; teamsters will cheer DJT.
Voight and his manager are very close to the mark in their discussions with the guilds: they will get some actionable ideas. Stallone and Gibson know how to make movies inside out…so there is real experience there too.
AI cannot be used for Studio screen imagery under pain of lawsuit and career death per legal departments. Even using it for behind the scenes concept work is frowned upon to the point where: why risk it? They are deathly afraid that AI itself can be used to ferret out the original source material and lead to lawsuits. In my experience so far, AI doesn’t save that much time except for people who have time to burn. who wants to spend tedious time feeding words to an uncooperative black box when a skilled artist can whip up something original in a few hours?
I have a bit more hope I guess.
Being in the bicycle hobby, I have been a past user of de minimis treatment. Back in the $200 days something of a crap shoot if you got hit with a tariff charge (mostly by express carriers, not mail). Most of the bicycle industry migrated to Taiwan, but after the adaptation of carbon fiber plastic as a structural material mainland China came to dominate that portion of the industry. In the US, wholesale distribution is tightly controlled by a handful of companies. The result has been high prices for the American consumer. This created opening for UK and EU retailers (mostly Germany in the EU) to sell direct to US consumers. The large component manufacturers caught on and will now cut-off any non-US retailer selling into the US.
Meanwhile the Chinese carbon bike frame builders had large capacity to supply the world assembled bike market and figured they could use some of that to supply direct to consumer. So I could buy a set of carbon rim wheels from Yoeleo for $700 that would cost around $3000 from a US brand like ENVE. A decent bike frame ran about $500-$700, again looking at $2000 – $3000 or more from a US brand.
There’s one US carbon frame builder, Allied, in Arkansas. Exists because some part of the Walton family is into bikes and they are the financial support.
There are some boutique US frame and component builders. For frames mostly steel and some Ti or Al. Components seem to be at the very high end (thinking Chis King for example) that seem to exist for the “bling” factor.
There are decent US Al wheels out there with US-sourced rims, spokes, and hubs. Though with hubs you need to find out where the bearings come from. I think Japan has the rep as providing the most accurate bearings.
referring again to TDS blue strain vs red strain – the perfect psy-op: Worst Case Scenario: Trump’s Tariffs Walling US Off Ahead of Wider World Conflict from clip header: “The US is preparing to subject its own population as well as those of its supposed “allies” to immense long-term economic, social, and political pain. The cost-of-living crisis in the US will only grow worse. The US hopes that it can endure economic pain and disruption at home and abroad better than the emerging multipolar world can. Multipolarism’s survival will depend on proving otherwise.”
Teamsters Cheer Trump’s Movie Tariffs, Rip Studios For “Fleeing” America
In a joint statement, general president Sean O’Brien and motion picture division leader Lindsay Dougherty called the notion a “strong step toward finally reining in the studios’ un-American addiction to outsourcing our members’ work.”
https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/business/business-news/teamsters-cheer-trumps-movie-tariffs-1236207663/