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Answerman - How Will President Trump's Proposed Foreign Film Tariff Affect Anime?

It blows my mind that tariffs are even being discussed when it comes to film

Thanks for doing this Jerome/Answerman, you have no idea how many people are not only scared of the announcement, and you have no idea how the announcement blew up and created a tense environment on the ANN forum.

It’s honestly a shame that Voight’s proposals couldn’t be hammered out into a bipartisan agreement. I have no love lost for Voight but a lot of the proposals weren’t bad since they were specifically designed to appeal to rank and file in production, set builders and the other people who often get ignored in the filmmaking process. It’s just the stupid tariffs that make everything worse.

It’s honestly a shame that Voight’s proposals couldn’t be hammered out into a bipartisan agreement. I have no love lost for Voight but a lot of the proposals weren’t bad since they were specifically designed to appeal to rank and file in production, set builders and the other people who often get ignored in the filmmaking process. It’s just the stupid tariffs that make everything worse.

The whole tariff announcement was concerning at first (and admittedly I got caught up in it a bit, too), but it was also immediately evident that the announcement was Trump's typical off-the-cuff declaration, one that had not been thought out at all in a practical sense. I'm now inclined to think that the thing fans should be much more concerned about is the removal of the "de minimis" qualifier on tariffs, as that is likely to have a big impact on the related hobby market (especially figmas, which is what currently matters most to me) if tariffs persist.

Also, thanks to Jerome for clarifying how much of a financial impact the overseas market has on current anime revenue for Japanese producers. Been getting tired of seeing this assumption that anime can just largely ignore all of this because overseas revenue is just a minor part of their finances.

Anyone who believes that the anime industry can continue to thrive with its traditionally myopic worldview is probably not reading the news. The amount of domestic Japanese investment shifting into entertainment including anime, live-action, digital publishing, video games, and stupid junk like blockchain and NFTs is astounding. This is driven by the projected overseas growth of the sector, especially anime. Up until Sunday, Anime was considered a very safe bet.

There's actually some things in Voight's action plan I am actually quite excited about.

I don't disagree but just on what's been said today and Thursday evening, I find it hard to think that the current regime is genuinely interested in anything that could be perceived as helping people.

Joe Mello wrote:

I don't disagree but just on what's been said today and Thursday evening, I find it hard to think that the current regime is genuinely interested in anything that could be perceived as helping people.

Without getting too into specific politics...

...plenty of the administration's doings are helping people: it just may not be the people you're concerned about or it's being done in ways you don't approve of or in ways that might even affect you personally in a negative way.

The country is a big place and nothing is going to benefit everyone. It's all about the trade-off and in the grand scheme of things anime fans complaining about anime costing more is probably not high on a lot of things most people in the country concern themselves with so it would be an acceptable trade-off to them.