Hollywood and NAFTA

Marta Russell ap888 at lafn.org
Tue Nov 16 09:31:35 PST 1999


I am not referring to products made in Hollywood, but a process -- the studios moving production to countries where they can get a cheaper workforce which has come in the wake of NAFTA. Isn't that largely what the WTO protest in Seattle is about -- the eroding of working people's jobs and job security and the beating back of unions?


>From the Hollywood Fair Trade Campaign press release:
"We are here to tell Mr. Daley and the world that behind the glitz and glamour of our industry is a factory town in deep distress - a community of working families and small businesses reeling from the effects of NAFTA and the very free trade agreements Mr. Daley has come to Hollywood to promote. The NAFTA structure Mr. Daley and the studio heads will be celebrating tonight is the very system that has removed our jobs to Canada and has taken with them our health insurance, our pensions, our kid's college funds, and our homes."

marta

Brad De Long wrote:


> 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



More information about the lbo-talk mailing list