US President Trump posts "I am going to suggest that Republicans and Democrats get together, and immediately craft Legislation to save the Movie, Television, and Entertainment Business in America"

Full post "I just had a GREAT and very interesting meeting with my Hollywood Ambassador and Movie Legend, Jon Voight! He is a fantastic man who loves our Country, and feels strongly about the Motion Picture and Television Industry. He hates what’s happened to it! It is being dissipated in its entirety. It has moved to Canada, and other Countries, with very little work being done anymore in the United States. Hollywood is a Complete and Total Disaster! Despite the name, it is getting very little work. There is no incentive to be there, and it is hurting California very badly. Jon, and many others in the Industry, are suggesting we do Federal Tax Incentives in order to Make our Movie and Television Production Business GREAT AGAIN, perhaps GREATER THAN EVER BEFORE! The amount of money spent on Tax Incentives will be made up tenfold by the money pouring into the Treasury’s coffers. Meetings are being set up with the Leaders of both Parties in order to get this done. It should be Bipartisan, especially since so much money is being lost in California, and other largely Blue States. I am going to suggest that Republicans and Democrats get together, and immediately craft Legislation to save the Movie, Television, and Entertainment Business in America. Congress should approve, immediately, a Federal Production Incentive to create Entertainment Jobs in America. It can be done quickly, accurately, efficiently and, importantly, will benefit ALL of America. What we watch on the Silver Screen should be made in what was once the Movie and Motion Picture Capital of the World. Let’s get this done! President DONALD J. TRUMP"

Posts of this kind sit in a familiar pattern for this administration: an announcement of intent ahead of any drafted bill, with the legislative path unspecified and the pay-fors asserted rather than scored. Statements framed as suggestions to Congress historically mark the opening of a process rather than a policy event, and the gap between post and introduced legislation has often been long, with the substance frequently diluted, reshaped or overtaken by other priorities. The relevant actors are congressional leadership on both sides, since a federal production tax incentive would need to be carried through tax-writing committees, and the bipartisan framing reflects the concentration of the affected industry in states whose delegations sit across the aisle. Sector-level precedent for targeted production incentives exists at the state level, where such credits have competed with one another for mobile productions, and jurisdictions offering them have seen filming migrate toward the richest subsidy rather than toward net new activity. A federal credit layered on that competition shifts the calculus against foreign jurisdictions that have attracted runaway production, with the transmission running through studio and streamer production-location decisions and, in listed names, the content-spend lines of the major entertainment groups. Worth watching is whether a bill is actually introduced and scored, since the absence of legislative follow-through has been the norm for announcements of this type.