Trump's Tariffs Are Almost Certainly Illegal ... Where Is The Pushback?

The president has usurped Congress's tariff powers and is disrupting the US economy, left and right, yet no one is trying to stop him. Why?

Photo by De'Andre Bush on Unsplash

Our idiot president is at it again.

Let’s put aside the fact that implementing these tariffs would be nearly impossible. Films are no longer physical objects that pass through a port of entry into the United States, and as Hollywood Reporter asks, “How will the Trump administration classify movies ‘produced in foreign lands’? Does including any scene shot outside the US qualify? Does a certain percentage of a film’s budget have to come from international production incentives?”

It’s a reasonably safe assumption that Trump hasn’t precisely thought this issue through.

Moreover, a move presented as a way to help Hollywood is one that the movie industry thinks is a terrible idea, and caused entertainment company stocks to go down on Monday. Not only is film production increasingly outsourced overseas, but if countries respond to a Trump tariff by imposing tit-for-tat tariffs on US movies, it would be a disaster for Hollywood (the film industry generally makes more money internationally than it does in the United States).

Suffice it to say, none of this is likely to happen (even though, it should be noted, the decrease in US film production is a real problem. For example, from January to March, there’s been a 22 percent drop in film production in Los Angeles).

This latest tariff call is particularly problematic because Trump is seeking to justify it as a “national security threat.” How is the fact that other countries make movies or that Hollywood is choosing to produce films overseas a “national security threat,” particularly when the US has a trade surplus from film exports?

Trump is completely and recklessly misusing the president’s limited tariff power. Where is the pushback?

When Is An Emergency Not An Emergency?