Hollywood studios are pressing Congress for a federal film and television production tax incentive backed by Donald Trump — the same industry that routinely mocks conservative Americans now wants those Americans' tax dollars to fund its bottom line.
The Motion Picture Association commissioned a report projecting $125.3 billion in additional U.S. production spending over nine years if the incentive passes, according to POLITICO. Bipartisan legislation could be introduced as soon as this week. The pitch is jobs and economic growth. The subtext is corporate welfare for an industry that has spent a decade alienating half the country.
The MPA — the lobbying arm for the major studios — is selling this as a matter of national competitiveness. Foreign tax incentives have lured productions overseas, the argument goes, and a federal credit would bring that spending back stateside. But follow the money: these are the same studios that inject gender ideology into children's programming, rewrite history to fit progressive narratives, and blacklist talent that dissents from the party line. Now they want a Republican-controlled Congress to subsidize that output.
It's a pattern playing out across industries right now. Tech giants are making their own play for favorable treatment under Trump. The Daily Caller reported Monday that Trump dismissed calls for AI guardrails as a "sick conspiracy" against AI and data centers, arguing the only guardrails needed are "a STRONG AND SMART (High IQ!) PRESIDENT." Trump singled out Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei, accusing him of "pretending to be a perfect little angel" while pushing regulations that would crush smaller competitors.
Congress isn't uniformly on board with Trump's hands-off approach. Senate Majority Leader John Thune broke with the president, telling the Daily Caller he supports guardrails. "There's responsibility for the companies to do that when it comes to the frontier on some of these models," Thune said. House Majority Leader Steve Scalise sided with Trump, framing the issue as a race against China and accusing established AI firms of seeking to "crush their competitors" through heavy regulation.
Republican Tennessee Rep. Tim Burchett offered a more structural critique: executive orders vanish with the next president. "If he wants to make executive orders and then we codify them, I think that can be a wise decision," Burchett said.
The common thread is clear enough. Whether it's Hollywood studios seeking tax breaks or Big Tech firms seeking regulatory capture, corporate interests are learning to speak Trump's language — competition with China, American greatness, job creation — to extract favorable policy from Washington. The question for ordinary Americans is what they get in return, beyond footing the bill for industries that hold them in contempt.
