Why Anime Fans Should Care About Trump's Movie Tariffs
The current president of the United States of America, Donald J. Trump, announced on his social network, Truth Social, that he will be saving the American movie industry by instituting a 100% tariff on all movies produced in "foreign lands." It's not clear to me if the president of the USA can authorize anyone to do something with a post on social media, let alone the Department of Commerce and the US Trade Representative, and while I assume the answer to that is no (and considering that the White House said that no final decision has been made), that is also not what I want to focus on here. I want to focus on why YOU, as an anime fan, should care about this flaming rhetoric and threats that are somehow finding their way into every aspect of our lives, art included.
Especially because if push comes to shove, you will be paying for it.
As I'm writing this, we have no idea what these tariffs could even look like or if they can be implemented. Anime News Network reports that there is a moratorium on tariffs on digital goods until March 31 of next year, or the next Ministerial Conference of the World Trade Organization (whichever comes first), but Trump has repeatedly threatened to pull the country from the WTO.
Would they be imposed on everything recorded outside of the US? Just the productions led by non-US companies? Movies only or TV shows as well? Would they extend to productions that hire actors or staff members who are not citizens of the United States? Would they include animated content? We don't know, as it's quite obvious that Mr. Trump didn't think too much in-depth about this announcement before sharing it with the world, but for the sake of this article, let's assume the tariffs will also apply to TV shows. Although maybe I'm wrong, and filming 100 episodes of a procedural crime drama series in Canada or filming scenery in Croatia, Egypt, or New Zealand, is truly a security threat.
What is pretty evident to me, as someone who watches anime, knows, and writes about it, is that anime is definitely not made in the US. We can argue about the definitions, and while I do admit that lines have been blurring in recent years, I still stand by anime being defined as Japanese animation, even if just for simplicity's sake. Still, if you know anything about the current state of the anime industry, you know that outsourcing to non-Japanese animation studios is rampant; looking at our seasonal production notes will show you that often, entire episodes are fully outsourced. You also probably know that these outsourcing studios usually tend to be other Japanese studios, Korean, Chinese, even European, but rarely, if ever, American.
Sometimes, production committees have American companies as members (think Netflix) or is based on a work owned by an American rights holder (Scott Pilgrim Takes Off, Lord of the Rings: War of Rohirrim), but even in those cases the animation itself is generally made by a non-American studio or even mutiple studios from all over the world. And this is without going into specifics of where animators, who are often freelancing, reside.
The point I'm trying to make here is that it's genuinely difficult to make movies (or TV shows) purely in one country, especially when it comes to animation. It's hard even for non-animated content and reality shows, such as Survivor, that are often recorded on remote islands. Even popular US-made franchises, such as the Avengers from the Marvel Cinematic Universe, are often filmed in other countries. At this point, we are used to posts such as this one, but it's increasingly obvious that they are not thought through at all.
So, how could this affect you as an anime fan? The first thing to know about tariffs: you will be paying for them. This could reflect on the prices of tickets for anime movies in cinemas, or could lead to the US simply getting fewer of them. Additionally, it could reflect on the prices of streaming services in every aspect: platforms such as Crunchyroll and HIDIVE that mainly host anime will have entire catalogs of content made outside of the US, and those that host other content besides anime (such as Netflix and HBO) have titles filmed or fully made in foreign countries.
The second thing to know is that tariffs disrupt supply chains, and when it comes to media and content, especially content such as anime, we're probably looking at a lack of options. Remember the days of watching anime on YouTube? Well, this will be slightly worse, because with how popular anime has gotten, efforts to curb piracy have increased, while the need for it has significantly decreased with how accessible everything is these days. I do need to note that this will mainly affect viewers in the US, but that could also lead to changes in the licensing landscape. The US is the biggest market money-wise, but it doesn't have the most consumers. Yet, it's very unlikely this won't affect everyone in some way, at least through increased prices of streaming services if nothing else.
Lastly, marking any foreign-made media as "propaganda" is incredibly dangerous. Sure, everything that has any sort of message can be seen as propaganda, but this word carries some heavy connotations. We've seen quite a few manga titles (and books in general) get banned by US school districts and schooling institutions for various reasons, so labeling movies as propaganda, just because of where they were made, feels like a peek into what is to come. How long until content that meets all technical requirements to avoid tariffs is still marked as unfriendly to the ideals of the state?
It's possible that this announcement is another in a line of empty threats and promises, but I think I speak for most of us when I say I'm tired of uncertainty. I don't live in the US, but I can see shocked people complaining about merchandise prices and announcements of delayed shipments from China, which is currently on a 245% tariff rate. And again, this is not something that is affecting only them; there are people whose livelihoods are in danger due to tariffs. If they start extending these to digital goods, there goes the collecting, easily accessible anime, and probably the gacha.
For a generation that is probably going to see something akin to a world war in our lifetime, I feel like the least we can have is a bit of stability. And maybe some joy from whatever preferred medium.
Featured image: Death Note One-Shot, © Tsugumi Ohba, Takeshi Obata/SHUEISHA Inc.
