this post was submitted on 05 May 2025
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Brilliant example (I wonder how tariff-exposed they are, presumably it's significant)
Yeah I wonder. NZ only got a 10% flat rate as I understand it.
But if there is a lot of uncertainty in the market (say a US president that could do anything crazy at any time), then companies are likely to hold back their spending to keep cash in reserve in case something happens. That might mean movies and TV shows go for cheaper special effects than they otherwise might have, so perhaps they get CGI instead of Wētā Workshop hand crafted models.
It also often means less advertising, which maybe Wētā might rely on for business as well.
Government decisions have wider effects than the immediate impact, one thing our own government is finding out after making 8k public servants (or whatever the current count is) redundant.
Trump recently announced 100% tarrifs on "Foriegn made movies" by which I think he means runaway Hollywood productions and Hollywood co-pros, both of which will affect the NZ film industry.
At this point there's got to be a less than 20% chance this plan will see the end of the month, or even the end of the week, right?
And there aren't any details, right? A movie isn't a car, it can be made in 10 places at once. How do you tariff a movie that was shot in Europe with scale models from NZ that was financed and produced by a US company?
How do you do it when it's an animated movie created by remote workers all over the world?
I think the problem is more the market uncertainty he and his cronies create.
Stocks dipped on it not because it will be coherent and work, but more because of the chaos badly-thought-out policy directives could create. It could for example take the form of levying studios who currently film overseas for the tax breaks, or it could take the form of an actual tarrif on distributors (which will hurt the US way more than it hurts anyone else, because Hollywood is now so reliant on Chinese box office that it factors it into content, so if China reciprocates it will hit hard).
I think it's clear at this point he is trying to create the unstable market. A stable market isn't a good place to make a lot of money. The ups and downs are where money is made (and lost) in large amounts.
I agree; it's definitely some kind of extension of disaster capitalism. "Blood in the streets" is how you make money (if you're already rich) and the shock doctrine has also shown that it's how corporate power is minted and entrenched.
This sort of seems worse. Did you see this recent Klein article?
I had not seen it. I feel like we have a lot in common right now with the people who were living through the post WW2, cold war error, thinking the world was going to fall apart. These articles read like dystopian fiction, but it's really happening.
I think you're right. And it feels like a lot of what is impinging on peoples' consciousness in the West now has already happened elsewhere, for example the rise of free market oligarchy in Russia after the fall of the USSR, or the experiences of refugees at the hands of ICE and their ilk, or the endless genocides.