The world of cinema is struck by customs duties on foreign films proposed by the American president, Donald Trump, who makes the future of largely globalized productions hover.
The head of state announced on Sunday that he asked his government to “immediately launch the process to institute customs duties of 100 % on all the films imported in our country which are produced in foreign countries”.
As often with shattering announcements of this type, details are not known. This did not prevent the cinema industry around the world from reacting strongly to the dilemma that is coming: no longer being able to show a film in the United States, for cost issues, or produce it entirely in this country.
“It looks potentially disastrous for the international film industry,” said a British agent on the specialized website Screen Daily, on condition of anonymity.
Subsidies, tax exemptions
“There are a lot of unknowns for our sector, but as long as we will not know more, there is no doubt that this will send jolts worldwide,” said the director of the organization of audiovisual producers in Australia, Matthew Deaner, at the AAP news agency.
Donald Trump responds to a popular economic model of American studios and filmmakers: obtaining subsidies or tax exemptions to shoot in countries (such as Hungary, Canada, the United Kingdom, Spain, Ireland, etc.) which, in return, are on the jobs generated and tourist benefits.
“The American film industry is dying very quickly. Other countries offer all kinds of incentives to attract our filmmakers and studios away from the United States, “wrote President Trump.
The new York Timeslittle suspect of sympathy for the ideas of Donald Trump, had devoted an investigation to the effects of this relocation in mid-April. He evoked the destruction of the middle class jobs in cinema and television in Los Angeles.
“It is nothing less than the future of Hollywood that is at stake,” wrote the daily life to synthesize the comments collected. A trade unionist compared the decline of the sector in California to that of the automobile in Detroit half a century ago. Large manufacturers still have their headquarters there, but the factories have left.
“Who wants that?” »»
“The major productions carried out from A to Z in the United States are rare,” confirmed a spokesperson for the Quebec Alliance of Image and Sound technicians, Evelyne Snow, interviewed by the daily The press.
She is worried about threatened jobs in Quebec. According to her, “an American production in Montreal brings 2000 people to life, starting from the cameraman to the limousine driver”.
In France, the director of the Public Cinema Support Establishment (CNC), Gaëtan Bruel, already said in April that Europeans had to “prepare for any hypothesis” in the face of “a possible American offensive against our model” support for culture.
Solicited by AFP in France, the civil society of authors, directors and producers (ARP), the National Federation of Film Publishers (FNEF) and the Union of Cinema Producers (UPC) did not react on Monday. The CNC did not wish to make comments.
But what the measure proposed by Donald Trump threatens is the whole economy of films. The obligation to do everything in the United States, under penalty of being barred access to American rooms, risks killing many projects in the egg.
The American cultural magazine Variety, which asks “seven questions” on this project, written in one of them: “Who wants that? Not Hollywood. The activity of cinemas is fighting to return to the levels prior to the pandemic. The last thing we need is a new tax. »»
