From the Washington Consensus to “America First”: Shifts in global audiovisual governance under the Trump Trade Agenda

Introduction

On 21st February 2025, the White House published a memorandum titled “Defending American Companies and Innovators from Overseas Extortion and Unfair Fines and Penalties” (The White House, 2025). The document singles out legislation requiring United States (US)-based platforms to fund domestic audiovisual productions, a practice that has become more widespread in Europe, Canada and Australia (Vlassis, 2023a). A few weeks later, the Motion Pictures Association (MPA) – representing major US studios and Video-On-Demand (VOD) platforms, including Netflix, Amazon-MGM, Disney, and Paramount – submitted an 86-page report to the Office of the US Trade Representative (Motion Picture Association (MPA), 2025), detailing “unfair trade practices” faced by its members across global markets. Citing a 2024 study by the Organisation of Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) on trade restrictiveness in the audiovisual sector, it claims that over 30% of the countries surveyed impose restrictions on streaming and downloading platforms, while the US itself maintains no such regulations. These measures, the MPA argues, amount to non-reciprocal, non-tariff barriers that hinder the competitiveness of the US film and TV industry and restrict consumer access to content.

These developments once again sparked debates on the tension between culture and trade, which has been at the centre of international political economy and cultural policy over the past few decades (Footer and Graber, 2000; Singh, 2007; Throsby, 2010). The emergence of new digital technologies and business models, particularly VOD services, has, however, profoundly reconfigured the audiovisual value chain and challenged existing policy frameworks (Johnson, 2019; Lotz, 2018, Vlassis 2021). Concerns about market concentration and questions surrounding regulation, investment obligations, content quotas, and digital sovereignty have become increasingly intensified (Goff, 2022; Lobato, 2018).

In this context, we seek to interrogate into the historical connexion between evolving landscape of global VOD governance and the long-lasting debates on culture and trade. Does it signal a continuation or a shift in US approaches to global audiovisual industries? How have other countries responded? What do these developments tell us about the future of global audiovisual governance? Along these lines, we revisit historical trajectories of tensions between culture and trade at the international level by tracing the evolution of these trajectories from the early days of the World Trade Organisation (WTO) through the adoption of the UNESCO Convention on Diversity of Cultural Expressions (CDCE) to the more recent developments in platform governance across constitutionally liberal regimes and their relations to America-first agendas under the Trump administration.

The historical approach taken in this article is particularly useful in helping us understand both the continuation and new dimensions of the debates on culture and trade at the global level. Drawing on analysis of primary written sources and grey literature, such as specialised publications (i.e. Inside US Trade, The Hollywood Reporter, Variety, Screen Daily, Deadline) and public discourses, we seek to provide a preliminary assessment of the impact of the “America first” approach in the global audiovisual governance in the light of VOD platforms. While pointing out to a broader shift away from economic multilateralism towards neo-mercantilist unilateralism in the US, and the global contested landscape following the shift, the article also connects this new development to the age-old practice of framing culture as purely trade activity that has historically characterised the US’ approach to global audiovisual governance.

“America first” in audiovisual governance: A dual track towards neomercantilism?

Following the development recounted at the beginning of this paper, the Trump administration’s cultural trade offencive escalated further in late September 2025 when the President publicly reiterated his threat to impose a 100% tariff on all films produced outside the US (Hayden, 2025; Spiegelman, 2025). US Trade Representative, Jamieson Greer, criticised policy actions, particularly quotas imposed by countries such as Canada, Australia, the United Kingdom, and the EU as “unfair practices” (Monicken, 2025) that restrict the number of US audiovisual content allowed on international market. He accused these countries of effectively conducting a “shakedown” by charging fees or taxes to US companies that want to distribute audiovisual content there. According to him, this amounts to a transfer of resources from competitive US audiovisual media companies to less competitive audiovisual media firms abroad (Monicken, 2025). While similar statements were made earlier, the renewed threat heightened concerns across the global audiovisual industry. In response, Olivier Henrard, deputy managing director of France’s National Centre for Cinema (CNC), highlighted the need for European unity in the face of increasing aggression from the US, warning that the continent must prepare for a more hostile trade environment and collectively defend its legal principles and enforcement mechanisms (CNC, 2025).

These tensions took place in a context that saw an increasing number of Hollywood films produced through international co-productions involving global financing, talent, and distribution partners. Visual effects teams, location crews, and technical specialists often work across borders, with US workers deeply embedded in overseas shoots (Roxborough, 2025). Meanwhile, global competition for film production continues to intensify. Countries such as the UK, Canada, Australia, Czech Republic, and Hungary have heavily invested in tax incentive programmes to attract international productions. At the same time, Los Angeles witnessed a plummet of feature movie shoot days from 3.901 in 2017 to 2.403 in 2024, “a 38% drop highlighting its dwindling role on the global scene” (FilmLA, 2024; Pollet et al., 2025). A recent report by industry tracker ProdPro also shows that the US production spending on major film and TV projects declined by 27% in the first half of 2025 compared to the same period in 2024 (Kilkenny, 2025; Sriram and Varghese, 2025).

Initially, industry objections to Trump’s proposed tariffs on foreign films were comparatively muted. Instead, the dominant response from organised industry stakeholders was to channel the debate towards domestic industrial policy. In a May 11, 2025 letter to Trump (MPA, 2025), Jon Voight and Sylvester Stallone-acting as the president’s “special ambassadors” to Hollywood-were joined by the MPA and major entertainment unions including SAG-AFTRA, the Writers Guild of America, the Directors Guild of America, and Producers United in calling for expanded federal tax incentives and more favourable accounting rules to “bring jobs back to America.” Significantly, the letter did not endorse tariffs, but neither did it reject the broader nationalist framing of “runaway production.” Rather, it reflected a degree of consensus across studios, streaming platforms and unions around the need for a more interventionist federal policy aimed at re-nationalising sections of the US screen industry and countering the competitive pull of foreign production incentives (Johnson, 2025; Maddaus, 2025b).

In August 2025, a bipartisan group of four US Congress members introduced new legislation, known as the CREATE Act (Creative Relief and Expensing for Artistic Entertainment), to extend Section 181 - often described as the nation’s closest equivalent to a federal film and television production tax incentive – through 2030 rather than 2025. It would also raise the cap on eligible production expenses to either $30 million or $40 million, depending on the filming location, and incorporate an annual inflation adjustment. The objective is to offer long-term certainty and bolster support for domestic film and television production (US Congress Library, 2025). Similarly, in summer 2025 California Governor Gavin Newsom has doubled the state’s annual film and TV tax credit from $330 million to $750 million to remain competitive (California State Portal, 2025).

Along these lines, the Trump administration’s approach to the audiovisual sector shows a twofold strategic objective. While encouraging inward investment at home, it simultaneously pushed for outward deregulation abroad. On the one hand, the prospect of imposing tariffs serves as a pressure strategy to signal to US-based companies that they should reduce their reliance on global production networks and rebuild capacity within the country. As such, it reasserts economic nationalism (Helleiner, 2019) by compelling major US media and entertainment companies, including global streaming services, to reinvest domestically. This involved pushing them to localise more of their production, post-production, and technological infrastructure within the country, thereby stimulating job creation, boosting domestic industry capacity, and reducing reliance on foreign film production hubs. The implementation of tariffs on movies produced overseas would face major legal and logistical hurdles though. Details also remain unclear, including how tariffs would be collected, whether they would apply to theatrical releases, streaming content, or both, how the US administration will define a “foreign” film production and how the relevant charges would be calculated (Sommer, 2025).

On the other hand, the administration intensified its efforts to uphold the longstanding deregulatory principle underpinning the US audiovisual export model. This increasingly assertive approach entailed exerting pressure on trading partners to liberalise their domestic audiovisual markets – granting access to US audiovisual works, services, and platforms without the imposition of quotas, levies, or mandatory investment requirements. Efforts by foreign governments to regulate or constrain US-based streaming platforms – whether through domestic content requirements or audiovisual investment obligations – were portrayed by the administration as discriminatory measures. Such initiatives were met with threats of significant retaliation, pushing foreign governments to tighten content quotas and investment obligations (Maddaus, 2025a).

This dual escalation suggests a transactional logic that drives a radicalisation of commercialism in global audiovisual relations, echoing the broader turn towards US economic nationalism in trade policy associated with the administration’s “America First” agenda (Noland, 2018). Here, even long-standing partners for the Hollywood film industry such as the EU, Canada, the UK and Australia were no longer seen as allies but as economic adversaries, posing a threat to US film industry and its global market dominance. The US administration also dismisses the usefulness and effectiveness of economic multilateralism. This neo-mercantilist turn (Helleiner, 2019; Steinberg, 2023) is intentionally nationalist, unilateralist and unpredictable – meaning it rejects the multilateral order based on compromise, negotiation, cooperation, and respect of international law. Unlike a liberal-inspired cooperation based on the search for absolute gains and a collective optimum that is inaccessible by unilateral behaviour (Keohane, 2012), the Trump administration perceives global competition, including in the audiovisual media sectors, through the lens of relative gains, underlined by the fear that partners may surpass the US in comparative capabilities (Santander and Vlassis, 2020). In this sense, international relations, including audiovisual exchanges, become a zero-sum game in which states compete for relative advantage and gains for one imply losses for another. The next section situates this shift in the “longue durée” of debates over culture and trade and how they have been reshaped by the rise of VOD platforms, most of which are US-based.

Looking back on culture and trade: between marketisation and platformisation

Since the late 1980s, the US has emerged as the primary advocate of a market-driven and competition-oriented approach to the production and distribution of audiovisual works (Gibbons and Humphreys, 2012: 18). This approach involved the expansion of policy norms that push countries around the world to adopt a set of marketisation policy prescriptions, focussing on trade liberalisation, privatisation, foreign direct investment, and deregulation (Babb, 2013). The approach is closely aligned with the broader ideological framework of the Washington Consensus, which gained prominence after the Cold War and the collapse of the bipolar international order. Its main assertion was that global welfare would be maximised by the liberalisation of trade, finance, and investment, and by restructuring national economies, through tax reform, fiscal discipline, and property rights, to provide an enabling environment for capital expansion (Harvey, 2005; Naím, 2000).

In this context, backed by powerful industry groups such as the MPA, successive US administrations sought to incorporate film and audiovisual goods and services into the framework of international trade negotiations. The most prominent examples include the last period of negotiations on the General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS) within the WTO in 1992–1993, the negotiations on the Multilateral Agreement on Investment within the OCDE from 1995 to 1998, as well as the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) in 1994 (Gagné, 2016). Growing concerns emerged regarding the cultural implications of these processes, particularly on the erosion of national cultural identities, threats to audiovisual sovereignty, and the potential decline of domestic film industries. These concerns underlined the emergence of the concept of “cultural exception” (exception culturelle; Depétris, 2008), which sought to exclude cultural and audiovisual goods and services from the agenda of trade negotiations. The concept emphasised the specificity of cultural and audiovisual goods and services as far more significant, whether politically, economically, socially and culturally, to be seen as commercial commodities subjected to the dynamics of free trade (Vlassis, 2015; De Beukelaer and Tran, 2024).

During this time, the term of cultural exception was progressively accompanied by a more inclusive term – “cultural diversity.” In 2005, the UNESCO CDCE was adopted as a response to the perceived encroachment of international trade agreements on national audiovisual policies (Graber, 2006; Vlassis, 2015). The CDCE focuses on the diversity of cultural expressions, which explicitly recognises the specificity of cultural goods and services and the importance of cultural policies in the context of global trade liberalisation.

However, since the 2010s, platform technologies have been transforming cultural production, distribution, and consumption. In the US, under the Obama administration, the inclusion of digital services within the scope of FTAs became a central priority (Vlassis, 2016). These incorporated catch-up TV, branded broadcaster channels on open platforms, and VOD services, all of which were identified as high-growth segments in the digital economy. From the US’ perspective, those services fall within the domain of e-commerce and information and communications technology (ICT) rather than culture. Accordingly, any regulation should be “the least trade-restrictive, non-discriminatory, and transparent,” aimed to foster “an open market environment” (US Congress, 2014: 18).

Efforts to pre-empt future regulation of digital cultural services through trade agreements coalesced around two major negotiating arenas: the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) between the US and the EU, as well as the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) including 12 countries of the Pacific region. On the TTIP front, the inclusion of cultural goods and services in the negotiation mandate sparked heated debate within the EU. France insisted on excluding the audiovisual sector from the scope of the agreement, invoking the principle of cultural exception. In contrast, the negotiations surrounding the TPP demonstrated a straightforward push from the US for digital trade liberalisation. Most notably, it sought to prevent the extension of cultural policy tools – such as local content quotas or financial levies – into the digital realm (Guèvremont, 2020). This move aligned with the argument articulated by the MPA that in the digital environment, where shelf space is un-limited and non-territorial, traditional audiovisual protection measures designed for the physical marketplace were deemed obsolete and unjustifiable (US International Trade Commission, 2014).

In this context, the revised Audiovisual Media Services Directive (AVMSD) was adopted by the EU in October 2018, applying to all broadcasters, including VOD platforms. By seeking to extend a cultural policy toolkit to non-EU online services, the Directive includes investment obligations towards VOD services and a mandatory quota of 30% for European works on their catalogues (Vlassis, 2023a; García Leiva and Albornoz, 2021). It represents a significant milestone, offering a coordinated EU’s approach to VOD regulation. It has also been a reference point for audiovisual media regulatory debates in other parts of the world (Vlassis, 2023b). However, the regulation of VOD services remains the subject of ongoing debates, as it continues to face strong opposition from the US administration and US-based industry players.

In broad terms, the rise of digital cultural content, as a core component of platform capitalism (Lobato, 2019; Poell et al., 2022) has intensified the tension between culture and trade. For the US, digital cultural content is economic commodity to be governed under ICT and e-commerce frameworks, while for many other countries – particularly in the EU and among cultural policy advocates – it is seen as cultural expression and vehicle of identities (Obuljen, 2006; Pauwels and Donders, 2011). The central issue remains whether digital cultural services should be subjected to the same deregulatory pressures as other digital services or whether their cultural dimension justifies continued and possibly expanded regulation (Ranaivoson et al., 2023). The next section returns to this global landscape of platform regulation, both in Europe and across constitutionally liberal democracies elsewhere.

The shifting landscape of streaming platform regulation

The regulation of global streaming platforms has become a central policy battleground across multiple regions. In Europe, Canada, and Australia, governments are seeking to strengthen obligations on streaming services, often triggering legal and diplomatic tensions, particularly with the US. At the same time, responses vary significantly, with countries such as the UK and much of Latin America adopting more cautious or fragmented regulatory approaches.

In October 2025, the European Parliament has expressed strong support for the EU’s AVMSD cautioning against what it calls external pressure from the US to dilute Europe’s audiovisual media regulations. In a resolution, members of the European Parliament reaffirmed that the AVMSD applies uniformly to all media providers operating within the EU – including US-based streaming and online platforms – without discrimination based on origin (European Parliament, 2025).

In the context of the AVMSD implementation, following a new decree issued in December 2023, all audiovisual operators in Wallonia-Brussels Federation (Belgium) – including broadcasters, distributors, and foreign platforms targeting local audiences – are required to increase their financial contributions to local content creation from 2024 to 2027. Previously set at 2.2%, contributions could now reach up to 9.5% of revenue, depending on annual turnover, with a scale ranging from under €700,000 to over €150 million. In 2025, Netflix and Disney filed a partial annulment appeal with the Constitutional Court of the French Community (Wallonia-Brussels Federation), noting that this new obligation is disproportionate compared to other EU regions (Société des Auteurs et Compositeurs Dramatiques, 2025).

Similar developments have been noted in Canada and Australia. The Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) issued a ruling in early June 2024 requiring online streaming services with Canadian revenues of CAD 25 million or more – and not affiliated with a Canadian broadcaster – to contribute 5% of those revenues to local content funds. In response, three of the world’s largest music streaming platforms – Amazon, Apple, and Spotify – launched legal challenges against the regulation. The MPA–Canada also filed a legal challenge against the equivalent 5% levy on video streaming services, arguing that the regulation exceeded the legal authority of the CRTC (Tencer, 2024).

In Australia, after some delays, the federal government finally announced in November 2025 a plan to require streaming services with more than 1 million Australian subscribers to spend at least 10% of local expenditure or 7.5% of local revenue on Australian content (Story, 2025). The plan was proposed earlier but postponed due to concerns over the reactions from the Trump’s administration. In early 2025, the MPA had raised its criticism to the Trump administration of Australia’s push to implement domestic streaming quotas. It also railed against “local content mandates” as violations of trade obligations under the US-Australia FTA (Jervis-Bardy and Dhanji, 2025).

In the UK, the government has been rejecting proposals for a 5% levy on streaming platforms and mandatory intellectual property retention rules, stressing the importance of maintaining a “mixed ecology” and the commitment to positioning the UK as a global production hub (Ramachandran, 2025). The government also credited VOD platforms with strengthening the domestic screen industry highlighting initiatives such as Amazon Prime Video’s training programmes and Disney’s investment in the National Film and Television School in Bedfordshire as well as the economic impact of major productions like Barbie and Bridgerton (Manfredi, 2025).

In Latin America, the MPA and global VOD platforms have intensified their influence by combining partnerships with industry actors and public institutions together with the production of knowledge aimed at shaping policy debates and discouraging regulatory interventions (Fernandes and Albornoz, 2023). Although regional approaches to audiovisual regulation have been encouraged (Baladron and Rivero, 2019), there is still a notable absence of regional coordination in this field (Fernandes, 2022). Despite discussions in several countries, no comprehensive regulatory framework for VOD has yet been implemented, and most state interventions remain limited to the imposition of taxes (Leiva et al., 2025).

In Brazil, debates over VOD regulation have gained renewed momentum after years of stagnation. Although proposals to regulate streaming services emerged as early as 2016 under the Workers’ Party government, subsequent political changes prevented substantive progress for several years (Marchi and Ladeira, 2019). With the Workers’ Party’s return to power, the issue was reactivated. In November 2025, the Brazilian Chamber of Deputies approved Bill PL 8889/2017, which proposes a regulatory framework for streaming services, including VOD and video-sharing, imposing a 10% quota for Brazilian content and a graduated levy on platforms’ gross revenues – ranging from 0.5% to 4%, depending on company size and revenue, with differentiated rates for VOD and video-sharing platforms. Despite these advances, several elements of the proposal remain controversial and are considered less ambitious than what many industry stakeholders had advocated. Although a final Senate vote was scheduled for 15 December 2025, it was postponed to 2026 following continued controversy and reported pressure from the US Embassy (Ghirotto, 2025). This episode illustrates both the strategic importance of VOD regulation within the US policy agenda and the highly politicised nature of contemporary VOD regulatory debates.

Conclusion

The article examines a conflictual global landscape in audiovisual governance, shaped by the dominant position of global US-based streaming platforms and the rise of economic nationalism in the US. The Trump administration’s “America First” confrontational stance, characterised by a dual track - nationalist at home, aggressively liberalising abroad - and based on tariff threats, denunciations of foreign audiovisual regulations, and relentless pressure on trading partners, marks a significant shift from economic multilateralism towards neo-mercantilist unilateralism in the US foreign policy. This strategic agenda involves a policy of national preference by encouraging leading US media and entertainment companies – including global streaming platforms – to reinvest within the country. At the same time, the US administration strongly upheld the principle of deregulation abroad, which has been central to the US audiovisual export model. While fostering domestic investment, it pushes for deregulation in foreign markets, pressuring trade partners to grant US content, services, and platforms unrestricted access.

On the one hand, these dynamics open a substantive agenda for future research that moves towards a more granular mapping of the political economy underpinning US audiovisual trade positioning. A first line of inquiry concerns the likely heterogeneity of the US screen industries themselves. Future work should systematically disaggregate the competing interests of studios, streaming platforms, independent producers, guilds, and service companies, many of which are differentially exposed to the emerging Trump trade doctrine, audiovisual globalisation and technological transformations. An additional strand of future research should interrogate the political transmission mechanisms through which these positions are translated into audiovisual policy, particularly the role of individual advocates, advisory networks, and coalition-building between political figures and audiovisual industry stakeholders.

On the other hand, the escalating tension reflects structural transformations. VOD platforms have blurred the boundaries between cultural goods, services, and technological infrastructures, intensifying the longstanding debate over whether audiovisual works should be regulated as commodities or as public goods central to identity, democracy, and cultural diversity. The current policy debate is no longer limited to quotas and subsidies; it now also encompasses questions of discoverability, algorithmic transparency, and data accountability. In this contested landscape, the audiovisual sector has become a strategic arena for struggles over digital sovereignty, global competitiveness, and the governance of platform capitalism.

However, the analysis is not limited to VOD services but also speaks to the persistent challenge of designing governance mechanisms that renew the cultural objectives underpinning audiovisual policy. Given the shift from economic multilateralism towards neo-mercantilist unilateralism, several implicit assumptions in the field also warrant revision. One is the US expectation that audiovisual globalisation would continue to produce convergence towards deregulatory norms and multilateral governance frameworks; instead, what emerges is an increasingly antagonistic audiovisual order marked by selective aggressive liberalisation, strategic economic nationalism by the US administration, and geo-economic rivalry structured around zero-sum logics. Another is the assumption that audiovisual policy could be analytically separated from foreign trade and industrial strategy (O'Connor, 2024): the neo-mercantilist and nationalistic turn of the US administration demonstrates that audiovisual industries are fully embedded within broader geopolitical struggles over industrial leadership, technological innovation, and control of investment flows.

Taken together, these dynamics suggest the need to reconceptualise global audiovisual governance not as a collective balancing act between cultural diversity and market integration, but as a contested field of techno-geopolitics in which the audiovisual sector becomes a key site where national interest, corporate power, and global competition are negotiated.