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

In this article, we discuss the contemporary shifting landscape in global audiovisual governance from two main perspectives. The first begins with the new agenda of the Trump’s administration on global trade in audiovisual goods and services, noting how it signals a shift towards neo-mercantilist unilateralism, which involves a dual push for US economic nationalism and trade liberalisation abroad. The second puts this recent development in the historical context of long-lasting debates over trade liberalisation and culture. Here we trace back to the early days of trade agreements within the World Trade Organisation and their later clashes with principles of cultural exception that paved the wave for international counter agreements, notably the 2005 UNESCO Convention on the diversity of cultural expressions. We then moved forward to the rise of streaming platforms and the revision of the European Audiovisual Media Services Directive as well as other emerging platform regulatory frameworks across nations. In this context, we highlight how the shift associated with Trump’s “America First” agenda is historically grounded in the United States’ long-standing dominance in framing culture through the lens of trade, while at the same time representing a radical intensification of commercialism in audiovisual exchanges.