‘America first’ and global audiovisual trade: The rise of neo-mercantilism and the shifting role of the European Union

In February 2025, the White House published a memorandum, singling out legislation requiring US-based platforms to fund domestic audiovisual productions, a practice that has become more widespread in the EU (Vlassis, 2023). The Trump administration’s trade offensive 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). Besides, US Trade Representative criticised policy actions, particularly quotas imposed by countries as “unfair practices” (Monicken, 2025). These tensions took place in a context that global competition for film production continues to intensify. 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. These developments once again sparked debates on the tension between audiovisual sector and trade, which has been at the center of international political economy and cultural policy over the past few decades (Throsby, 2010). The rise of new business models, particularly VOD services, has reconfigured the audiovisual value chain and challenged existing policy frameworks (Lotz, 2018, Lobato, 2018). As such, we seek to interrogate into the historical connection between the resurgence of neo-mercantilism in international trade, the long-lasting debates on culture and trade and the role of the European Union in this confrontation. Along this paper, we revisit historical trajectories of these tensions by tracing their evolution from the negotiations on GATS and the “cultural exception” - promoted by the European Commission - through the UNESCO Convention on Diversity of Cultural Expressions (CDCE) to the more recent developments in VOD platform regulation across the EU Audiovisual Media Services Directive (AVMSD). In this context of persistent tensions between culture and trade, the EU has positioned itself as a normative power in global audiovisual trade, counterbalancing the market dominance of the US/Hollywood. This normative influence is evidenced by the EU’s ratification of the CDCE, the promotion of Cultural Cooperation Protocols in trade agreements, and the defence of the cultural exception in negotiations such as the TTIP. It is further reinforced by the dissemination of the EU’s audiovisual policy model to other regions (e.g., Mercosur) and by the way the AVMSD has opened new regulatory pathways for public authorities worldwide seeking to govern VOD services. Drawing on analysis of primary written sources and grey literature, such as specialised publications (i.e. Inside US Trade, The Hollywood Reporter, Variety, ScreenDaily) and public discourses, as well as a selective set of semi-structured interviews, the paper seeks to address the following questions: Does the neo-mercantilist turn signal a continuation or a shift in US approaches to global audiovisual trade? How have the EU and EU Member States responded? To what extent does the ‘America-first’ agenda impact the EU strategy towards trade and audiovisual industries? What do these developments tell us about the international regulatory competition in the light of VOD services? The paper is based on the research activities carried out under the Horizon Europe projects REBOOT and ANIMA MUNDI.