Can Donald Trump really put a tariff on films?

After criticizing everything from clothes to avocado with the customs tariff, President Donald Trump has now assumed the goal of films. Trump in fact announced last week, “The film industry in America dies with a very fast death.”

The news sparked confusion throughout Hollywood, as it seems to apply to a wide range of films, and perhaps even US films with scenes filmed abroad. Although Trump has already started raising his original statement, CNBC told “he does not look forward to hurting industry”, he does not seem to abandon the idea completely. But like many Trump plans, it depends on the presidential forces that extend to the collapse point.

“The car has a value when it reaches an American port that can hunt a tariff,” says Mark Jones, a professor of political science at Rice University. “But because of the way the film industry works, it will be difficult to determine the percentage of the film that you will actually apply to the customs tariff.”

Trump’s tariff plan appears to have gone out of a meeting with actor John Voette, a supporter of Trump, who was appointed as a “private ambassador” to make Hollywood great again. The plan that has been published entirely since then Delivery dateIt is mentioned to provide more tax incentives for producers, but also proposes definitions. The Voight Plan says that if the movie “In the United States, the product can be produced in a foreign country and receives a tax incentive for production”, the government must impose a tariff “equal to 120 % of the value of the foreign incentive.”

congress is usually responsible for imposing customs tariffs, but Trump has become an expert in attracting emergency tools to fees unilaterally on imported goods. The past few months benefit from the overwhelming customs tariffs of the IEEPA Act of 1977, a law that gives the president the ability to implement definitions in response to an “unusual and unusual threat” to national security or economy.

The Brennan Center for Justice – and many states that sue Trump – also indicated that the current global trade situation does not call for a national emergency. “It is not possible to consider long -term trade relations that long -term trade relations are an unexpected emergency,” says a book from the Justice Center in Brennan. “If Trump believes that the global customs tariff can benefit the United States, it needs to be submitted to Congress.”

Trump has not said what the law he would use to impose taxes on films. If IEPA, then even according to its usual standards, this is an extension. The base includes a specific sculpture to protect the exchange of “information materials”, such as publications, movies, stickers, photographs, CDs and artworks. This language suggests even in light of its emergency powers, Trump should not have the authority to impose a tariff on films.

We have seen the rules of “information materials” into effect during the first period of Trump’s state, when a federal judge banned his initial ban on Tijk in 2020. The judge ruled that the president had no “organizing or banning” import “of media materials and” personal communications, which does not involve the transfer of anything of value. “

But there is a different rule that Trump can use to impose a tariff on films: Article 232 of the 1962 commercial expansion law. This law allows the president to impose or seize definitions if the US Secretary of Commerce finds that a specific import “can threaten or weaken national security.” In his position, which suggested a tariff for films, Trump called the cinematic incentives offered by foreign countries “a concerted effort” to take films from the United States, making it a “threat to national security”.

Even if this doubtful logic continues, collecting money would raise more problems. Films can cross our borders in several different ways that would allow them to avoid passing through customs and confront the customs tariff – whether they are uploaded to a cloud storage service, or are broadcast through a broadcast service such as Netflix, or even transfer to cinemas using solid drives.

“The laws that the president can depend on to strike imported goods are not laws that provide him with the authority to do so regarding the audio and visual content that does not remove customs or is already here,” said John Magnos, President of Tradewins LLC, a commercial consulting company based in the capital. freedom. “Most likely, if it will happen, it will not seem like a customs tariff.”

It may be possible to collect something like the taxpayer, which is placed on the goods purchased in the country, such as cigarettes, alcohol, soda and gas. But this is likely to be outside the scope of Trump’s control, where, again, Congress only has the power to impose taxes – and unlike definitions, there is no emergency force for consumption taxes ..

if Congress It addressed the reason for the taxpayer, which is likely to be applied to a foreign movie distributor, which will then be transferred to consumers, is likely to raise the price of everything starting from movie tickets to broadcast services.

“Prices are much higher than they were,” says Christopher Maysner, a professor of economics at the University of California Davis. freedom. “It will reduce the scope of the films we can watch.”

Like many things that Trump adopts, the details surrounding the drivers are not present, and the fruits of the plan may never be paid. “We spend a lot of time and energy discussing things and analyzing things, at the end of the day, will not lead to anything, because it is [Trump] “He may have an intention now, but to go forward, he will not reach anything,” says Jones.

However, many people have never believed that Trump could detonate the United States of Chinese trade as well-and we all see how it turned.