Hollywood and NAFTA

Brad De Long delong at econ.Berkeley.EDU
Tue Nov 16 07:45:16 PST 1999



>Well after years of being chummy with the studios, and
>having little allegiance to any workforce other than their
>own, the Hollywood unions have finally realized their own ox
>is getting gored by NAFTA. Surprise!
>
>--
>Marta

Ummm....

What does NAFTA have to do with this?

As far as I know, there were no or minimal tariffs on the import of movies or film from Canada before NAFTA.

Canada does have some restrictions that content broadcast in Canada must contain a significant "Canadian" portion, and those restrictions may or may not fall as a result of NAFTA...

So is there any reason to think that NAFTA has anything to do with film production in Canada? There is a reference to "NAFTA-sanctioned subsidies" provided by the Canadian government, but surely NAFTA did not *create* these subsidies--it only failed to remove them.

Surely the balance of trade is still overwhelming in favor of the U.S.: eliminate all international trade in TV, movies, and movie production and Hollywood movie employment goes down by at least half.

So where's the beef?

Brad DeLong



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