Trump announces 100% tariffs on movies 'produced in foreign lands'

[localroger]

11. It's worse than the car industry

Canada has very strong support for filmmakers. Even films made by American studios with no scenes obviously shot in Canada will almost always have a round of placards thanking various Canadian authorities for their support at the end of the credits -- just saw this today with Marvel's Thunderbolts movie. Then you have films that are almost entirely made in Canada because of their pro film studio policies, to the point where some critics joke that alien worlds in general seem to bear an amazing resemblance to British Columbia.

And how is this tariff to be collected? At the box office? Well that will work. Not. A modern film is made of information. It goes back and forth in digital form, being processed, edited, converted, and reworked in many steps after filming (with digital cameras) is long finished. How do you measure where that final file that gets submitted to the Library of Congress and the Oscar committee came from? How do you tell when and where it crossed the border? What happens if US and Canadian FX animators are working together and passing their work products back and forth?

The whole idea is beyond stupid. One might as well try to tax breathing. Oh wait, I probably shouldn't be giving them ideas.