Carl Johan von Seth: Trump’s movie duties kick up the door to an economic Narnia
French politicians have long lived by the motto « Économie et culture, même combat ». But it was unexpected that just Donald Trump would be overpowered by such a strong cultural economic campaign.
His latest idea is to introduce 100 percent tariffs on films recorded abroad. A matter of « national security » (which the French have always said).
With that play has the US President kicked up a door that has so far been closed in the trade war. Behind it is an invisible world, where US real economic significance in the world becomes clear.
The fact that American popular culture dominates globally hardly needs to be pointed out. The whole world listens to Lady Gaga and Bruno Mars. They stream « The Last of Us » and queue for the bio premiere for « A Minecraft Movie ». The United States, on the other hand, consumes hardly any foreign culture at all. Yes, unless these productions are counted as foreign to the recording sites being located outside the United States.
Purely economically is American Cultural and entertainment industry a relatively small player. But it is representative of two of America’s foremost forms influence in the world: the country’s enormous soft power and the US dominance in global service trade.
What a little cryptically is called service trade is in practice everything that raises money but is not sent by truck or arrives in the port terminals containers. This whole odorless economy is an anomaly in Donald Trump’s rhetoric.
Here is none of the American decay he usually talks about. None of the swelling trade deficits that he otherwise rage against, and sees as evidence that the outside world has blown the United States.
The American television and film industry, on the contrary, boasts that it generates a trade surplus of $ 15 billion a year.
The Swedish consumers As recently, trying to avoid buying stuff from American companies has noticed the pattern. It is difficult to find US-manufactured products in the store at all.
However, we pay both Netflix subscriptions and iCloud space with the visa card (also American). At work we use cloud services and software that have been almost entirely done in the United States.
Last year, the United States exported this type of EU services to almost $ 300 billion. And it’s a staggering profitable business. US service imports from the EU, in turn, were only $ 200 billion. The exchange is almost as one -way as in the film industry.
The thing also is that this whole trade is duty free. Customs on film? Is not available. Can hardly be implemented.
The play is still said to have received Brussels to open the popcorn bags, but with some trepidation. Now that Trump has discovered the invisible economy, his own logic beats back on himself.
Hello, maybe the EU can say, look what you blow us with your expensive office packages and poor social media. And you refuse to return the service. Why should we let this go on?
Snapchat cannot be introduced. But all companies can be regulated to death. Although the EU knows how to do it, this new front has not been opened in the trade war.
But if Trump himself takes the first step, the matter may be another.
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