Georgia
Georgia film industry braces for impacts of proposed movie tariff
How would movie tariffs impact Georgia?
President Donald Trump says he wants to slap a massive tariff on all movies made outside the United States. White House officials are trying to figure out how that would work and say they’re exploring all options.
ATLANTA – President Donald Trump has made overtures about placing tariffs on all foreign-made films.
The Hollywood of the South has some things to say about that.
What we know:
The past few years have been tough for film and TV production in Hollywood and here in Georgia. “We’ve been hit significantly,” said Darius Evans, co-president of the advocacy group Georgia Production Partnership. “A lot of the production houses and stages I have talked to are about 40 percent down in business.”
Streaming, the pandemic, Hollywood strikes, and rising labor costs have taken their toll. Add to that, a number of foreign countries now offer lucrative incentives to lure productions abroad.
President Trump now wants to impose a 100 percent tariff “on any and all movies coming into our country that are produced in foreign lands.” He believes that will bring more on-screen productions back to the U.S.
What they’re saying:
“It’s a terrible idea,” Evans said. He says a tariff on foreign productions would create a tax that would hammer an already battered industry. “It would be totally destructive for us as a new economy here in the state of Georgia.”
So far, the White House has said little on how it would levy those tariffs.
“How does it get taxed and tariffed in a traditional way? It’s too early to tell,” said Randy Davidson, CEO and founder of the advocacy group Georgia Entertainment. “On the surface, a tariff sounds great, ‘hey, let’s get these productions back to America that are going overseas,’ but it’s not as simple as that.
“There are multiple entities that own a production, there are multiple locations that are included in a film. There are productions I know of right now, 80 percent were shot in Australia, 20 percent here in Georgia and in America,” Davidson said.
Tariffs are usually applied to goods, not services like film and TV. “It’s not a car, it’s not an iPhone. It’s a varying, moving target, so it’s very hard to figure out how that would happen,” Davidson said.
Evans says the consumer would end up paying more. Both men say they’d rather see a federal tax credit instead of a tariff. They say a tax credit would go further to persuade productions to stay in the U.S.
The Source: FOX 5’s Christopher King spoke with Darius Evans, co-president of the advocacy group Georgia Production Partnership, for this article.
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Kirk Fordice-like Rick Jackson is sounding a whole lot like Daniel Kirkwood Fordice as he tries to be elected Georgia’s next governor.
Fordice came out of nowhere — actually, Vicksburg is somewhere but you know what I mean — in 1991 to become a two-term Mississippi governor.
He had money but nothing like Jackson, a billionaire businessman who’s also trying to emerge from nowhere politically to win Georgia’s top office.
“The establishment hated Trump, because they couldn’t control him. They are going to hate me,” Jackson says in an ad for Georgia’s Republican Primary on May 19, sounding like one of my favorite Mississippi governors — Fordice, because of his unpredictable personality (he could vilify or charm you, all in one sentence), not his politics. He died in 2004 of cancer.
I stood by a cafe entrance one morning, waiting to cover a Fordice speech. When he appeared, I stuck out my hand to shake his. “I’m not shaking your damn hand. You’re part of the problem down there (referring to the newspaper),” he told me, smiling and moving on.
Jackson rose to become one of economic giant-Georgia’s wealthiest people. He came from Atlanta’s rough midtown area, ending up in the foster care system. He left college due to poor financial circumstances.
The 71-year-old Jackson wormed his way into the dynamic city’s business scene in the late 1970s, mostly of the healthcare variety with mixed success before starting a workforce staffing and services company and later an antibiotics manufacturing plant. He turned those businesses into billion-dollar enterprises.
“It’s God’s money,” he said in rural Blakely, and he’s been charitable with it.
Jackson doesn’t try to hide his vast wealth. His family lives in a 48,000-square-foot mansion at Cumming, a place of nearly 100,000 people near Atlanta in Forsyth County, which once promoted its almost all-white population as a virtue.
Atlanta Journal-Constitution columnist Bill Torpy recently wrote that Jackson will spend a ton of his own money in seeking another mansion, the one occupied by Georgia’s governor. Torpy noted that present Lt. Gov. Burt Jones was once heavily favored to win the primary race, but he’s fallen behind Jackson’s bold money bid.
“The one-time front-runner in the Republican primary (Jones) has been relegated to No. 2, the result of a $100 million Mack truck running him over.
Rick Jackson, a billionaire healthcare tycoon, a man with a sly smile and reptilian gaze, is the guy driving that truck,” Torpy wrote.
The GOP field includes Secretary of State Brad Raffensberger, who spurned Trump’s demand to find 11,780 votes that would’ve allowed him to win Georgia in 2020.
Fordice was effective with some bombastic rhetoric during his run for governor, but I don’t remember it reaching the histrionic level employed by Jackson. In a major ad blitz, often referencing (Georgia college student) Laken Riley’s murderer, Jackson promises that unauthorized immigrants committing violent crimes will be “deported or departed … any questions?”
In another ad, Jackson growled, “Like President Trump, I don’t owe anybody anything, and like you, I’m sick of career politicians.”
Fordice spent only $1 million to get himself elected Mississippi’s governor. He somewhat sneaked up on the establishment, riding no escalator to the first floor of his Vicksburg concrete river mats-contracting office to declare his intentions. Who could ever forget his announcement seeking the governorship that ran on page 5 of the Clarion Ledger?
Recent polling ahead of Georgia’s May primaries for governor shows the eventual Republican nominee faces a strong Democrat in the November general election, most likely former Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms. That’ll require another whole pot of money.
— Mac Gordon, a native of McComb, is a retired Mississippi newspaperman. He can be reached at macmarygordon@gmail.com.
Gulfstream recently announced a $5 million investment in Georgia education, welcoming students and leaders to its Savannah headquarters.
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