While the import and export of physical goods may have been the early focus of U.S. President Donald Trump’s bilateral trade moves, the Asia-Pacific region’s film and TV industries may soon be shaken by the new “America First” policy.

There are calls for Asian governments – particularly South Korea – to wind down screen industry development systems.

In Australia, there is evidence that the new U.S. regime has already influenced media regulations.

Hollywood lobby group the Motion Picture Association (MPA), which represents major U.S. studios, Netflix and Prime Video/Amazon MGM Studios, sees the top three screen trade issues in Asia as; i) strong copyright and content protection; ii) distribution market access; and iii) production policy, or ease of doing business where the studios want to make film, TV or streaming content.

Sources close to the organisation told ContentAsia that while these issues are not new, the return of a Trump administration has presented an opportunity to re-flag and re-amplify them.

Streaming and growing audiences for local content has, since the pandemic, weakened traditional Hollywood studios’ position in Asia Pacific. And many are still adjusting.

Still, the MPA is not pushing for an aggressive reset.

“Under Trump 1.0 we didn’t feel it was in either side’s benefit for cultural and audio-visual products to be targeted. That hasn’t changed,” the source says.

Other forces are urging a more aggressive position.

The Coalition of Service Industries (CSI), another Washington lobby group, has recently petitioned the U.S. Trade Representative (USTR) to pressure Korea to dismantle its “Screen Quota” system that has partially shielded the Korean film industry from foreign competition since the 1960s.

In other instances, trade policy reviews not specific to the screen industry may suck film and TV into the discussion.

Trump has claimed that trade partners have exploited the U.S. over many years and has since taking office torn up multilateral trade deals.

While this threatens to be highly disruptive of global trade patterns, the Trump philosophy is hinged on the U.S.’s position as the world’s largest economy and the principle that might is right.

Citing both trade and national security reasons, Trump has imposed tariffs or import taxes on goods from Mexico, China and Canada, the U.S.’s three largest trading partners. His officials are now looking at expanding the “reciprocal tariff” system to other countries.

The Korea-U.S. Free Trade Agreement is set to be re-examined from 2 April.

Korea’s Screen Quotas, which the CSI describes as “unfair trade practices [causing] harm from non-reciprocal trade arrangements”, are regulations that require Korean cinemas to programme local films for a minimum number of days per year.

Between 1967-2006, before Korea had multiplex cinemas, the annual requirement was 146 days. In 2006, ahead of the signing of a wider Korea-U.S. FTA and despite some colourful protests by movie industry celebrities, the minimum screening days for Korean films was halved to 73.

Korean film has boomed (whether because of or despite the quotas remains a matter of fierce debate) and by 2019 the country boasted the world’s fifth-largest cinema box office. Driven by high per-capita attendance and a market share of roughly 50% for local titles, Korean cinemas had no difficulty exceeding the minimum number.

“Over 16 years later, amidst rapid development of its cultural industries and the success of many Korean films and television productions internationally, now is the time for Korea to show leadership in the region, trust the choices of its consumers and further reduce or eliminate its screen quota,” CSI says in a paper submitted to the USTR.

Signs of movement will be watched carefully around Asia.

Malaysia also operates a compulsory screening system in local cinemas. Indonesia operates both a 60% local content quota and a ban on imported films being dubbed.

Concern about compatibility with current trade agreements (let alone a deal revised by the Trump 2.0 administration) was a major reason the Australian federal government in November 2024 said it had halted plans to introduce minimum spending or local content quotas for... streaming platforms.

It explained that the quotas would have violated two chapters of the Australia-U.S. FTA: one on “Non-Discriminatory Treatment of Digital Products [which] prohibits preferential treatment for digital products based on the national origin of an author, performer, producer, developer, or distributor”; and another “which prohibits measures designed to achieve a given level or percentage of domestic content.”

However, on Wednesday (2 April), within hours of Trump’s announcement of an array of new tariffs, Australia’s Prime Minister Anthony Albanese pushed back.

“Our Government stands by our media bargaining code. We strongly support local content in streaming services so Australian stories stay on Australian screens,” Albanese said.

The local industry loudly welcomed his position, saying that the delay had already made it more difficult to find Australian screen stories on streaming platforms.” This comes less than six months after the MPA, in an October 2024 note, highlighted Asia-Pacific’s market access obstacles, including “content quotas, foreign investment limitations, and dubbing and advertising restrictions” in Australia, China, Indonesia, Malaysia, South Korea, Taiwan and Vietnam.

The MPA also criticised foreign ownership and investment restrictions in the media industries of China, India, Malaysia, Philippines, Taiwan, Thailand and Vietnam.

U.S. and Asian governments could also potentially clash over the imposition of network usage fees on content service providers (streamers including Netflix, YouTube). These fees have been discussed by South Korea’s National Assembly and are being mooted by Thailand’s National Broadcasting and Telecommunications regulator (as well as by lobbyists in India and Australia).

Tax may also be a further challenge in the region. The entertainment tax in Malaysia and India’s Local Body Taxes on theatre admissions are alleged to have created ticket price disparities in those markets.

China offers the potentially the biggest flashpoint. Its film and TV industries are protected by an array of investment limits, import quotas, ownership rules and censorship systems, all of which the U.S. regards as market restrictions.

Many of these points are covered by a bilateral U.S.-China film trade agreement, which was signed in 2012 when the Chinese film industry was a fraction of its current size. Renegotiation started in 2017 but stalled in 2019, leaving the 2012 deal out of date, but still in effect. When those negotiations restart or how much the Trump regime is willing to battle on behalf of Hollywood is moot.

Moreover, China’s economy is vastly bigger than those of other Asian countries, which makes it harder for the USTR to pressurise China into change. Second, U.S. studio movies are currently flowing more easily into China than they were a decade ago.

But, as Chinese audiences have increasingly turned to local fare, Hollywood’s share of China’s theatrical market has tumbled to 10%-15% – Disney’s Snow White failed to earn gross revenues of even US$1 million on its opening weekend and did not reach the box office top five.

That suggests that China would suffer little negative impact if its import quotas were ever scrapped. Other commentators say U.S. trade negotiating pressure might actually ease one intra-Asian screen trade stumbling block. Korea’s cultural content (movies especially, but also TV shows and K-pop) have been largely absent from mainland Chinese distribution systems since mid-2016 following a government-level disagreement over Korea’s deployment of the U.S. THAAD missile defence system. There are now suggestions that a Chinese cultural delegation may soon visit Korea, that the existing China-Korea FTA could be upgraded and that bilateral China-Korea culture industry relations could be repaired before an APEC summit in China some time in 2026.

“I’m expecting bigger room for China and South Korea to cooperate in the Trump era,” Huang Rihan, a professor of international relations at Huaqiao University, told Hong Kong daily, the South China Morning Post. It is not the first time that such China-Korea reconciliation has been posited. And momentum may slow again. But, with the U.S. throwing around its weight against both allies and rivals, trade relations and cultural policy in Asia are sure to make further headlines this year. - By Patrick Frater