President Trump's recent call for Congress to pass a federal film and television tax credit, which he has proposed naming "The Motion Picture, Television, and Entertainment Revitalization Act," has given fresh momentum to a long-standing Hollywood ambition. Although often framed as a favour to Los Angeles, the article argues the measure is really an economic lifeline for states such as Georgia and Louisiana, which built up substantial production industries but are now losing work to countries offering more generous incentives, at a time when the wider US film industry is already under pressure from post-streaming contraction and the rise of AI.

Georgia's film and TV spending has fallen from a peak of $4.4 billion in 2022 to $2 billion last fiscal year, a ten-year low, with productions dropping from 412 to 280, while Louisiana has seen output fall by roughly 65% over three years and lost 52.7% of its film jobs since 2021, the steepest decline nationally. The article attributes this partly to foreign incentives that US states cannot match alone, including the UK's 40% tax credit and Canada's stacked federal and provincial credits, which can exceed 50% in provinces such as British Columbia and Ontario. Around 80 countries now offer a national film tax credit, whereas the US currently has none, prompting productions and streamers like Netflix to increasingly film abroad.