The current White House administration has chosen to start a trad war with the rest of the world. 

While the governments of the United States and China are in a tit-for-tat battle over the size of the tariffs for goods sent to each country; China has found another way to express their displeasure…Hollywood films.

Limiting access to films, the ,” China’s National Film Administration wrote on its website, “we will follow market rules, respect the audience’s choices, and moderately reduce the number of American films imported.”

And some local government is mulling over whether to ban American film all together.

While governments continue to consider a film ban, the current tariff count is at 125 percent on both sides after China was the latest to “up the anti”.

While China routinely insists on film releases that have been altered to accommodate cultural laws and limit violence; an outright limited access or even a ban could make a considerable mark in Hollywood economics.

America tops the world in the movie going business with over $9 billion spent in 2023 – 27 percent of the global market – China is in second place; followed by the rest of the world.  China was a close second in 2023 with $7.7billion – 23 percent.

Since 2010, China’s box office has boomed going from $1 billion in 2011 to $9 billion in 2019.

The 2019 when “Avengers: Endgame” became the second biggest film of all time, China brought in $632 million at the box office.  And Hollywood gets 25 percent of money earned from the Chinese cinema.

But in recent years, China’s domestic film market has taken over a vast majority of the market at about 80 percent.  Despite the decline at the box office, the Chinese film industry is still an important market for Hollywood and the American film industry is still working to recover from the Covid pandemic.

Author Chris Fenton spoke to Reuters saying, “such a high-profile punishment of Hollywood is an all-win motion of strength by Beijing that will surely be noticed by Washington.”

While the governments can battle it out with their tit-for-tat tariff increases, China’s banning of Hollywood films has no rebuke…Chinese films make no money in America.