Trump plans a 100% tariff on movies made outside the U.S.

by Guillermo Alvarado

U.S. President Donald Trump's ability to create astonishment and disaster with a single statement seems to have no limits, and an example is his recent announcement that he plans to apply a 100% tariff on movies made outside the country.

One might think this was a joke if his inability to manage a more or less intelligent sense of humor were not so well known. This quality is not one of his attributes.

The statement was made by the tycoon on Sunday night, and on Monday morning the stock markets began to plummet for companies such as Netflix and Disney, among others.

Perhaps because of this, the White House was forced to publish a clarification in which it points out that there is still no final agreement on the application of this measure or the amount that the tariffs on foreign films would have.

But the case shows that Trump does not have much idea of how some things work and does not make much effort to get proper advice.

Like many products in the world, film as an industry has become internationalized, and it is common for several countries to participate in a film.

According to the president, "other countries have stolen the films, the cinematographic capacity, from the United States", but what he did not say, perhaps because he does not know, is that many companies prefer to film in other countries where they enjoy magnificent tax incentives.

But this is not the only outburst of tone of the president, as it caused from laughter to indignation the image of him released by the White House, where he appears personified as the Pope, something that was at least disrespectful to the millions of Catholic believers around the world.

Shortly before that, when asked by the press for his opinion on the selection process of the heir to the recently deceased Francis, Trump said that he would very much like to be Pope, that it was his number one choice.

To increase suspicions about his altered mental capacities, he came up with the idea of pressuring Mexico's President Claudia Sheinbaum to accept Pentagon troops into her country for the purpose of fighting organized crime.

When the top official said no, that would be going too far, Trump criticized her, saying that she was so afraid of the drug cartels that she couldn't think straight.

That is also going too far, of course.