Latest news with #foreignfilms
South China Morning Post
7 hours ago
- Business
- South China Morning Post
China's film distributors pledge more imports to diversify market
China's film distributors have called for diversifying the country's cinematic offerings with more and better titles from overseas, at a time when domestic productions have seized the lion's share of the market from their imported competitors. At a work conference held by the state-owned China Film Group Corporation, as well as Huaxia Film Distribution, companies vowed to bring in 'good titles from multiple countries' to improve the number, quality and market share of foreign films, state media outlet China Film News reported on Monday. Distributors at the meeting also committed to 'leveraging imported films' positive effect of diversifying and expanding the market.' Foreign films in China have been in a 'harsh' situation this year, with box office returns lagging behind their domestic rivals, distributors said at the Friday meeting. '[We] should encourage more good international films to enter the Chinese film market,' said Mao Yu, an associate director of the Communist Party's publicity department, which oversees regulation of the film industry. China has enjoyed a strong rebound in box office revenue this year, after a brief retreat in 2024. But the growth has mostly been driven by domestic titles such as Ne Zha 2, an animated feature that has become the highest-grossing Chinese release of all time. By mid-May, 26.6 billion yuan (US$3.7 billion) in box office revenue had been recorded for 2025, more than 60 per cent of the returns for all of 2024, according to state broadcaster CCTV. Almost 96 per cent of the take was attributed to domestic titles.
The Verge
10-05-2025
- Business
- The Verge
Can Donald Trump really put a tariff on films?
After slamming everything from clothing to avocados with tariffs, now President Donald Trump has taken aim at films. 'The Movie Industry in America is DYING a very fast death,' Trump proclaimed on Truth Social last week, while floating a 100 percent tariff on movies 'produced in Foreign Lands.' The news stirred up confusion across Hollywood, as it would seemingly apply to a broad range of films, maybe even US films with scenes shot abroad. Though Trump has already begun to reel his original statement back in, as he told CNBC that he's 'not looking to hurt the industry,' it doesn't seem like he's given up on the idea completely. But like many of Trump's plans, he's relying on presidential powers that are stretched to a breaking point. 'A car has a value when it arrives at a US port that they can slap a tariff on,' says Mark Jones, a professor of political science at Rice University. 'But because of the way the film industry works, it'd be much tougher to determine what proportion of the film you would actually apply a tariff to.' Trump's tariff plan appears to have spun out of a meeting with actor Jon Voight, a fervent Trump supporter who has been appointed a 'special ambassador' to 'make Hollywood great again.' The plan, which has since been published in full by Deadline, mentions offering more tax incentives for producers, but also proposes tariffs. Voight's plan says that if a film 'could have been produced in the U.S. but the producer elects to produce in a foreign country and receives a production tax incentive,' then the government should impose a tariff 'equal to 120% of the value of the foreign incentive received.' Typically, Congress is in charge of imposing tariffs, but Trump has become an expert at pulling emergency levers to unilaterally stick fees on imported goods. His past few months of sweeping tariffs leverage the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA) of 1977, a law that grants the president the power to implement tariffs in response to an 'unusual and extraordinary threat' to national security or the economy. As pointed out by the Brennan Center for Justice — and the many states suing Trump — the current global trade situation doesn't call for a national emergency. 'By no stretch of the imagination can long-standing trade relationships be considered an unforeseen emergency,' a writeup from the Brennan Center for Justice says. 'If Trump believes that global tariffs could benefit the United States, he needs to make his case to Congress.' Trump hasn't said what law he'd use to tax movies. If it's the IEEPA, then even by his usual standards, that's a stretch. The rule includes a specific carveout to protect the exchange of 'informational materials,' such as publications, films, posters, photographs, CDs, and artwork. That language suggests even under his emergency powers, Trump shouldn't have the authority to impose tariffs on movies. We saw the 'informational material' rules come into play during Trump's first term, when a federal judge blocked his initial ban on TikTok in 2020. The judge ruled the president doesn't have the 'authority to regulate or prohibit' the import of informational materials and 'personal communications, which do not involve a transfer of anything of value.' But there's a different rule Trump could use to impose tariffs on films: Section 232 of the Trade Expansion Act of 1962. This law allows the president to impose or adjust tariffs if the US Secretary of Commerce finds that a particular import can 'threaten or impair the national security.' In his post proposing a tariff on films, Trump called the film incentives offered by foreign countries a 'concerted effort' to take away films from the US, making it a 'National Security Threat.' Even if that dubious logic holds, collecting the money would raise more problems. Films can cross our borders in many different ways that would allow them to avoid going through customs and facing tariffs — whether they're uploaded to a cloud storage service, beamed through a streaming service like Netflix, or even transferred to movie theaters using hard drives. 'If it was going to happen, it wouldn't look at all like a tariff.' 'The laws that the President can rely upon to hit imported goods aren't laws that provide him authority to do that in respect of audio-visual content that doesn't clear customs or is already here,' John Magnus, president of Tradewins LLC, a DC-based trade consultancy, told The Verge. 'So most likely, if it was going to happen, it wouldn't look at all like a tariff.' It might be possible to collect something like an excise tax, which is placed on goods purchased in the country, like cigarettes, alcohol, soda, and gas. But this would likely be out of Trump's control, as, again, only Congress typically has the authority to impose taxes — and unlike tariffs, there's no emergency power for excise taxes.. If Congress took up the cause of an excise tax, it would likely be applied to the distributor of a foreign film, which would then be passed onto consumers, likely raising the price of everything from movie tickets to streaming services. 'Prices are already much higher than they used to be,' Christopher Meissner, a professor of economics at the University of California Davis, tells The Verge. 'It'll limit the range of movies we can watch.' Like many of the things Trump espouses, the specifics surrounding film tariffs are nonexistent, and the plan may never come to fruition. 'We spend a lot of time and energy discussing things and analyzing things that, at the end of the day, are going to lead to nothing, because he [Trump] has no real intention,' Jones says. 'It may be that he has an intention now, but moving forward, they're never going to amount to anything.'
Yahoo
10-05-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Trump Calls Hollywood's Decline A 'National Security Threat,' Orders A 100% Tariff On Foreign Films
President Donald Trump proposed a 100% tariff on foreign films on Monday The announcement, which was made on TruthSocial, came after a meeting with "special ambassador" to Hollywood Jon Voight Reactions from industry professionals have been mixed, as studios and executives are unsure how the tariffs would be imposed President Donald Trump on Monday announced his intention to introduce a 100% tariff on foreign films. "The Movie Industry in America is DYING a very fast death. Other Countries are offering all sorts of incentives to draw our filmmakers and studios away from the United States. Hollywood, and many other areas within the U.S.A., are being devastated. This is a concerted effort by other Nations and, therefore, a National Security threat. It is, in addition to everything else, messaging and propaganda! Therefore, I am authorizing the Department of Commerce, and the United States Trade Representative, to immediately begin the process of instituting a 100% Tariff on any and all Movies coming into our Country that are produced in Foreign Lands. WE WANT MOVIES MADE IN AMERICA, AGAIN!," the Truth Social post said. Don't Miss: Deloitte's fastest-growing software company partners with Amazon, Walmart & Target – Maker of the $60,000 foldable home has 3 factory buildings, 600+ houses built, and big plans to solve housing — Trump has not detailed how that tariff would be imposed. According to the World Intellectual Property Organization, movies are intellectual property, not goods. It's unclear whether they could be subject to the types of levies he's imposed on other material items. However, the U.S. Trade Representative has established guidelines for non-tariff trade barriers on some services that could be applied in this instance. In recent years, many foreign locales have offered large tax breaks for studios to shoot movies and TV series outside Hollywood. A survey from ProdPro found that the top five preferred production locations by studio executives in 2025 through 2026 were all outside the U.S. In response, California's Gov. Gavin Newsom proposed a massive tax credit in October that would bring film production back to Hollywood. However, some veteran studio executives and producers told Reuters they had concerns about the proposed plan. Trending: How do billionaires pay less in income tax than you?. Producer Todd Garner raised questions about whether the tariffs would stifle creativity or lower production quality. "How would you make 'Saving Private Ryan' in the U.S.? In Shreveport? Or a globe-trotting 'Mission: Impossible?,'' he said. Others see the plan in a different, more positive light. Duncan Crabtree-Ireland, the executive director of the SAG-AFTRA actors' union told Reuters, "We look forward to learning more about the specifics of the plan announced by the president and to advancing a dialogue to achieve our common goals." Trump's decision to impose tariffs on foreign films came after a meeting on Monday with actor Jon Voight, one of the president's "special ambassadors" appointed to address Hollywood issues. Voight later posted a video about the meeting. Sitting in front of a U.S. flag, he said that he'd met with entertainment leaders who helped him come up with a set of tax provisions aimed at helping "movie and television production and our beloved theaters that are so important to the American family experience." Read Next: Donald Trump just announced a $500 billion AI infrastructure deal — .Image: Shutterstock UNLOCKED: 5 NEW TRADES EVERY WEEK. Click now to get top trade ideas daily, plus unlimited access to cutting-edge tools and strategies to gain an edge in the markets. Get the latest stock analysis from Benzinga? APPLE (AAPL): Free Stock Analysis Report TESLA (TSLA): Free Stock Analysis Report This article Trump Calls Hollywood's Decline A 'National Security Threat,' Orders A 100% Tariff On Foreign Films originally appeared on © 2025 Benzinga does not provide investment advice. All rights reserved. Error in retrieving data Sign in to access your portfolio Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data
BBC News
08-05-2025
- Entertainment
- BBC News
BBC News weekly quiz: Which star showed off her baby bump at the Met Gala?
This week saw Roman Catholic cardinals meet to choose the next pope, people across Europe mark the 80th anniversary of the end of World War Two, and Donald Trump declare war on foreign how much attention did you pay to what else has been going on in the world over the past seven days?Quiz compiled by Ben Fell. Fancy testing your memory? Try last week's quiz, or have a go at something from the archives.
Malay Mail
08-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Malay Mail
Fear and loathing: Trump's proposed film tariffs send shockwaves through Latin America's movie industry
BOGOTA, May 8 — President Donald Trump's threat to slap tariffs on foreign-made movies has left Latin America's burgeoning film industry baffled and fearful. Until this last lazy Sunday evening, Latin American cinema had been riding high. I'm Still Here won Brazil its first Oscar in March, a drumbeat of hits topped streaming charts and more and more movies were being made in the region. Netflix recently announced it would invest US$1 billion (RM4.2 billion) to produce series and movies in Mexico over the next four years. Brazilian actor Selton Mello (left), Brazilian actress Fernanda Torres and director Walter Salles attend the red carpet of the movie 'Ainda estou aqui' (I'm Still Here) at the 81st International Venice Film Festival in September 2024. 'I'm Still Here' won Brazil its first Oscar in March. — AFP Then the US president — or perhaps an aide on his behalf — picked up a device and began to type. 'WE WANT MOVIES MADE IN AMERICA, AGAIN!' a Truth Social post screamed. 'I am authorising the Department of Commerce, and the United States Trade Representative, to immediately begin the process of instituting a 100 per cent Tariff on any and all Movies coming into our Country that are produced in Foreign Lands,' he posted. Like many of the 47th president's missives, it caused immediate shockwaves. Film-makers from Canada to Hollywood to Australia gasped, wondering if the final curtain was falling. But in Latin America, there was also confusion — a sense that something may have been lost in translation. Award-winning Argentine producer Axel Kuschevatzky — whose projects include Oscar-winning The Secret in Their Eyes — said the first task was to 'understand if the measures are going ahead' and 'what their scope would be.' 'Tariffs apply only to goods and not services,' he told AFP. 'In reality, audiovisual production is a service.' Marianna Souza, president of the Brazilian Association of Audiovisual Production, said it was also unclear if streaming platforms and cross-border productions would be included. The iconic Hollywood sign is shown behind a person sitting in the shade along Hollywood Blvd as the city prepares to host the 97th Academy Awards in Los Angeles, California February 25, 2025. — Reuters pic 'Made in America' The nightmare scenario is a blanket toll on foreign-made production. In Colombia, Gustavo Suarez, a cinema professor at Valle University, estimates that 60 to 70 per cent of local production is linked to international projects. Recently they have included Narcos and 100 Years of Solitude. 'Netflix, Amazon, HBO, and all these platforms are making more and more movies and series in Colombia because it's cheaper than making them in the United States,' he told AFP. 'There will be an impact,' he said. But filmmakers also point out that — much like the car market and its global supply chains — it does not always make sense to talk about films or series being from one country. 'Production is dynamic. You could have capital from four countries and film in four different countries,' said Kuschevatzky. Defining 'Made in America' is difficult. 'How do you define that? The financing? With who owns the intellectual property? Where it was filmed? A definition is complex.' — AFP
