Lights...camera...action
A director from Italy shoots a movie in Africa with a script written by a German for a US studio, owned by a London-based hedge fund. And Trump wants to tax — with a 100% tariff — the non-US parts.
Thursday, May 8th, 2025
Bill Bonner, from the ranch at Gualfin, Argentina
The ‘check engine’ light is on! The latest, from USA Today...
In a social media post on May 4, President Donald Trump announced he's authorized his administration to slap a 100% tariff on movies produced outside of the U.S. because, as he put it, "the Movie Industry in America is DYING a very fast death." He called the incentives used to bring filmmakers and studio productions to other countries "a National Security threat" and "propaganda," and concluded his message by writing, "WE WANT MOVIES MADE IN AMERICA, AGAIN!"
Yes, dear reader, movies made outside the US are now a National Security Threat!
And maybe he’s right...there are a lot of foreign movies that make you think. No leader wants that!
Just watch the 2022 German movie All Quiet on the Western Front. You are likely to come away with less than full and unlimited support for America’s DUI hire, Pete Hegseth, and his ‘lethal’ war-fighters. General Erich Ludendorff had pretty ‘lethal’ forces too. At the least, you might wonder whether killing one another for no apparent reason is such a good idea.
Ditto the two great classics on Stalingrad— one is told from the German point of view...the other from the Soviet perspective. Both are grinding, punishing, relentlessly somber views of block-headed military leaders and blind obedience to them.
And then, of course, there is the classic War and Peace. The 1967 Soviet-made epic goes on for seven hours. We’ve never seen the whole thing...but it leaves you with three worthy insights: Following ‘Big Man’ leaders is dangerous. Empires fall as well as rise. And it is not a good idea to invade Russia.
And then there are all those movies — surely intended to undermine US jefes — that question the competence and moral authority of government. The French Algerian movie Z, for example, starring Jean-Louis Trintignant, is clearly meant to shake our faith in armed, assertive leaders.
And then, there’s the great English movie, V for Vendetta. It makes you doubt the goodwill of ‘the State’ generally...and leaves you suspicious of its efforts to force you to do things you don’t want to do.
And how about Bitter Harvest, a Ukrainian movie about the great famine engineered by Stalin and carried out by government employees during the 1930s? The ‘Holodomor’ resulted in as many as five million deaths.
There’s also the 1927 German movie — Metropolis — made by Fritz Lang. In 2008, a forgotten reel of it was discovered in a museum here in Argentina. It was used to reconstruct the film in its entirety. There are many parts of it that seem silly and naïve, to us...but its main message — that you can’t trust the feds — is still not one the Big Man in the White House would want you to get.
The Germans have seen what happens when the feds go wrong. The Lives of Others focuses on the way the secret police in East Germany tried to prevent anyone from getting ‘Western’ ideas. It is a marvelous film that highlights the courage of a single spook who surreptitiously undermines the police state.
And talk about a quagmire!
The film industry is perhaps the most ‘internationalized’ in the world. Just look at the 1971 film Viva la Muerte — another movie that disses government authority. Shot in Algeria, France, Spain, Italy, Portugal, Brazil, Philippines, Morocco and Tunisia and directed by Fernando Arrabal — the film is both subversive and globalized.
How would you tariff it? A director from Italy...shoots a movie in Africa...with a script written by a German...for a US studio, owned by a London-based hedge fund. And Trump wants to tax — with a 100% tariff — the non-US parts?
What a field day...a dream come true...a deep, dark swamp for lobbyists, lawyers, accountants, and fixers to splash around in! There are at least a dozen major steps to making a movie. Today, they are farmed out to the sources all over the globe... producers always trying to get the best, most appropriate quality at the lowest price.
Who knew this would compromise US national security? But if Trump gets his way a whole army of hacks will get busy, undermining the free market choices of people with real skin in the game...and destroying the US-based film industry.
But at least it could be entertaining. We can look forward to a whole new genre of remakes. ‘An American in Paris, Texas,’ for example. Or, ‘Baltimore Holiday,’ with Hollywood’s next Gregory Peck and Audrey Hepburn (maybe they will have tattoos and piercings!)
And of course, the ‘Spaghetti Westerns’ filmed in Spain and Italy and starring Clint Eastwood, could easily be remade in the US. Maybe they will be renamed the ‘Chick-Fil-A Mid-westerns’...filmed on set in Zanesville, Ohio.
Sure to be box office hits!
Regards,
Bill Bonner
When I saw the news about Trump's desire to tariff foreign films to protect the American movie biz, my first thought was that someone had hacked Truth Social. Surely, Our President must know that most American movies suck anymore. Indeed, and for all the money which paves the golden streets of Hollywood -- as evidenced by all the fancy cars and lucrative cocaine budgets -- the place has descended into intellectual poverty and bankruptcy of thought and message.
In my moviegoing experience of recent decades, American movies tend towards awful. Scripts are shallow, plots are formulaic, storylines are miserable and emblematic of the juvenile brainiacs who somehow have come to dominate the industry. Worse, other (and presumably older, wiser) people actually write checks to fund this dreck and drivel.
If you want a momument to cinematic failure, look no further than Disney. Not only has the collective Disney C-Suite crashed the Star Wars franchise, they even hamburgered a remake of Snow White, aka Snow Woke. Pinnocchio would roll in his grave, if only his nose wasn't so long.
Every time Trump does something I like, he turns right around and does something incredibly stupid like this.
Save Hollywood??? While I haven't watched a movie in over 20 years, from what I've read there isn't anything in Hollywood worth saving!
Let the industry die a slow, painful, self-inflicted death. The USA would be better off for it.