Why “makes Hollywood again make sense”

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Maga has always been of manufacture. Donald Trump talks about recovering production lines in Midwest because so many of the economically precarious voters more open to their message were the factory workers fired in the old industrial cities of production line.

But last week, the president began talking about rates not in steel, but in films abroad. Now he wants to “re -make Hollywood again” by pushing companies to produce more films in the United States.

At first glance, the idea that cinematic business needs to protect bonkers. America is the world’s highest exporter in the world. Most Hollywood revenue come from overseas audiences that make North -American Action films, thrillers and animated blockbusters. Movies are an important part of American Soft Power. Given all this, Hollywood’s tariff protection has promoted the usual skepticism of liberals (and many conservatives) who believe that most of the president is.

They are wrong. Like so many Trump’s ideas, the idea can be economically defective, but he is politically smart. Hollywood is a large union city near Orange County, which is a hot bed for magician. Just as Pennsylvania’s steel workers and Indiana machinists became more precarious by China’s clash, Tinseltown feels anxious not only for cheap foreign competition, which has been carrying out Los Angeles production work for years, but also technologies that decrease work as artificial intelligence that will mainly change the industry’s commercial model.

To take advantage of it, Trump offers his usual recipe: You are anxious for the future, I will offer you a solution that will probably not work economically (retaliation rates would cause little pain abroad while impairing Los Angeles), but it will make you feel politically careful. In the true style of Conman, he has taken the Nugget of Truth: the content, the media and the coding are essential for a new class of “precarious” of service workers who care about their future opportunities will be much less rich than those of the past.

These are exactly the most likely type of people to be attracted to the right. As an academic research body has shown, while direct poverty can reduce support for far -right populism, middle -class voters concerned about the future are often attracted to and their false promises of better opportunities. This “small and shouting” precarious is very well inclined to the United States, as well as in many European countries.

Trump is not the only one who talks about the precariousness of Hollywood’s jobs. California Governor Gavin Newsom has proposed much larger tax credits for the industry to try to recover middle class work in cinematic business: camera, electrician operators, makeup and others who have been displaced by foreign counterparts, as production has been moved where the labor is cheaper and the audience is larger.

But these jobs are vulnerable to technology: a better digital equipment means you don’t need so many people running with cameras and filters can do cosmetics in some cases. In addition, technological interruption also threatens the highest work of the creative food chain.

The media, content and coding (all the most important California industries) are those that are fastest disturbed by the AI. This was at the heart of 2023 work battles by Hollywood writers and actors. It was not so much of the wages and benefits as the way companies use intangible assets and intellectual property, such as ideas of digital stories or images and voices, the number of control workers on things like AI and how the wealth is shared.

The truth about what helps or hurts people economically is not necessarily important here. This is political optics

Intangible assets (software, patents, digital data, trademarks and other IPs) represent approximately 80 percent of the value in the balance sheets of large companies. This makes sense, as we live in a service economy depending on more and more on digital data. The percentage of wealth that lives on the IP will only grow.

Hollywood depends more on intangible assets than most sectors. Many actors began in films, along with union membership (and therefore benefits such as health care), through a few tracks as well. But digital images now eliminate much of this work. And many writers are being replaced, not only increased by Chatgpt.

The media may be at the end of the interruption, but the law and health are not behind. There will be many places across the country beyond Hollywood, where Trump can cultivate a larger political basis with promises to keep foreigners and automation away. I could imagine a ban on foreign radiologists who read X -rays or fixed Great law firms who hire virtual research associates. The truth about what helps or hurts people economically is not necessarily important here. This is political optics.

Thus, as Democrats graduate more and more a “ abundance ” agenda focused on regulating reform and not so different from neoliberal policies in the 1990’s, which are cemented as a privileged party, Trump cultivates a new group of eager workers, this time in services. She is so smart. And problematic. While the MAGA manufacturing line mainly calls on a small set of manual workers in a good number of Swing States, the service sector represents 79 percent of the US workforce. Precarious policy.

RANA.FOROHAR@FT.com