Trump’s Trade War With China Is Now Hurting Hollywood—and US Soft Power

Last weekend, A Minecraft Movie made $15 million in China in its opening weekend. Thanks to President Donald Trump’s new tariffs on the country, that success story might be the last of its kind, for a while at least. On Thursday, Trump announced 145 percent tariffs on Chinese goods, even as he has placed a 90-day pause on some of the hefty tariffs he’d imposed on other countries around the world. As part of the country’s response to the escalating trade war, the China Film Administration announced that it will cut the number of US films allowed into the country. The US government’s move to “abuse tariffs on China,” a spokesperson said in a statement Thursday, “will inevitably further reduce the domestic audience’s favorability towards American films.” That’s bad news for Hollywood. Rather than impacting the markets that Trump watches so closely, a drop in the number of US movies playing on Chinese screens will deeply impact the cultural cachet American cinema has in the country, and ... Read full article.