President Donald Trump announced on Monday that he intends to impose a tariff on films made outside the United States and, although the complete details of said tariff are not yet clear, he could conflict with a 1988 law destined to ensure that the United States can import foreign media and films without restrictions.
Key data
Trump intends to impose a 100% tariff “to each and every one of the films that are made outside the United States,” said the president in Truth Social on Monday, stating that the “United States cinematographic business has been stolen … by other countries, such as stealing ‘sweets to a baby’.”
The president’s comments echoed previous statements made in May threatening to impose tariffs on foreign films, but Trump did not provide more clarifications on Monday about what specifically the tariffs will apply and what authority is using Trump to promulgate them.
The president’s threats have generated concern among the legal experts that tariffs could violate the Berman amendment, an added disposition in 1988 to the Law on Economic Emergency International Powers (IEEPA), which grants the Presidents Powers to impose economic sanctions during national emergencies.
Trump used IEEPA to justify its broad tariffs on the “day of liberation” earlier this year, but the Berman amendment specifies that the presidents cannot regulate the importation of informative materials, including films.
The amendment, which was promulgated in the midst of concerns about the government prohibition of materials from certain countries during the Cold War, establishes that the president cannot regulate “the importation of any country, nor the export to any country… of any information or informative material”, even in media such as “publications, movies, posters, phonographic discs, photographs, microfilmes, microfiche, tapes, tape of art and news channels ”.
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What to pay attention to
Trump has not given more indications about how his tariffs will be to non -American films or when they could be imposed, limiting himself on Monday to affirm that he will “impose” the 100 %tariff. Nor is it clear to what tariffs will be specifically applied, if they will be cinematographic rights, digital or physical copies of any film or other costs associated with film production. There are also few legal precedents that verify whether the Berman or IEEPA amendment in general apply to tariffs, although the Supreme Court is considering the latter.
What does the Berman amendment cover?
The Berman amendment says that the president cannot impose economic sanctions on imports or exports of informative materials, regardless of the format in which they are, how they are transmitted or if they are sold commercially. The only exception to the amendment is for materials that encourage terrorism. The Congress modified the scope of the provision in 1994 with the Free Trade Law of Ideas, which added the language on which the means of transmission does not matter, in order to prohibit the regulation of any material on the Internet. Although the language of the Berman amendment is quite wide, the federal government has historically interpreted it more restricted and said that it does not include materials that are not completely finished, such as films still in production or manuscripts that need additional editions. That suggests that Trump could try to elude the amendment arguing that it does not apply to American films that are filmed abroad and that they are still in production.
Is Berman amendment applied to Trump’s tariffs?
It is not clear, especially because the scope of Trump’s tariffs and their legal justification for them are still in the air. Some legal experts have insisted that the tariffs should be covered by the Berman amendment, with the law professor at Georgetown Anupam Chander, telling Marketwatch that “the statute could not be clearer”, and the law professor at Fordham University John Pfaff saying that Trump “has no authority to do this” because “the law says’.” Other experts have suggested that the matter could be more difficult to decide for the courts, given the lack of precedents around the attempt to impose unilateral tariffs on the materials covered by the Berman amendment. “This could become a somewhat narrow and granular reading of the law,” said Matt Wood, vice president of policies of the Free Press media agency, Marketwatch in May. The question of whether Trump is allowed to impose tariffs under IEEPA will also be decided by the Supreme Court in the coming months, so a ruling in that case could affect how IEEPA (and its Berman amendment, by extension) can be used to regulate future tariffs.
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Could anything else stop Trump’s tariffs to the cinema?
Any tariff on films could also be hindered by a global moratorium on customs tariff Possinger Law Group. It is possible that hindering access to foreign films can also lead to legal demands that Trump is hindering the rights of filmmakers protected by the first amendment by silencing their freedom of expression through their films.
Tangent
Trump was already previously hindered by the Berman amendment during his first term, when the president signed an executive order to prohibit Tiktok. A federal judge failed in 2020 in favor of blocking Trump’s executive order and keeping Tiktok online, aligning with the social networks, which argued that the Berman amendment prohibited the president from taking any measure against the application. The Congress subsequently approved legislation that exempt Tiktok from the Berman amendment and allowed its prohibition in the US.
Key history
Trump has used tariffs as his main economic tool during his second term, imposing generalized tariffs on imports from almost all countries, as well as rights that affect specific sectors such as steel and cars. The president has recently announced new tariffs to imports such as pharmaceuticals, and Trump’s publication on Monday about the imposition of tariffs on films manufactured abroad was accompanied by a separate publication that announced tariffs to the furniture manufactured outside the US more outside of Hollywood and USA. The production of film and television in Los Angeles has decreased by a third in the last 10 years, according to film data cited by The New York Times, although many in the industry have protested that any tariff on films or foreign film production will only worsen the situation further, and that the imposition of tax credits for films made in the US. UU. It would be a more useful incentive.
This article was originally published by Forbes US
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