by Neil Hrab
January 19, 2004

Cultural creativity is big business in America.  According to the most recent data from Economists Incorporated, U.S. "copyright industries"—including recording companies and Hollywood studios—export $88.97 billion worth of their wares each year.  These industries represent about 5.2 percent of America's GDP.

But not everybody sees this as a success story.  Global cultural snobs take the popularity of American music and movies as a personal affront.  They have quietly devised a scheme to cut back the worldwide flow of U.S. cultural exports.  There is still time for the Bush administration to stop this effort dead in its tracks, but only if the President acts decisively.

This scheme is known as the International Network on Cultural Policy (INCP).  Formed in 1998, its core membership includes the governments of Canada, Croatia, France, Greece, Mexico, Senegal, South Africa, Sweden, and Switzerland.  (It recently held its sixth annual meeting in Croatia.)  INCP claims that its purpose is to act as "an informal, international venue [where members can talk about] new and emerging cultural policy issues and consider integrated ways to promote cultural diversity.”  These empty platitudes hide a well-defined agenda.

To understand what INCP actually represents, let us turn to French President Jacques Chirac.  In a speech delivered days before a February 2003 INCP conclave in Paris, he outlined INCP's agenda in terms of an epic global battle.  Chirac claimed that, "the champions of unlimited trade liberalization are once again lining up against those who believe that the creations of the mind cannot be reduced to the rank of ordinary merchandise," and accused these unnamed cultural "free traders" of seeking to foist cultural "products pre-formatted for the masses" on an unsuspecting world.  He didn't identify these faceless profit-minded philistines, but there can be no doubt his barbs were aimed at the United States.

President Chirac's dislike of American cultural products' mass appeal isn't just fodder for angry speeches.  His government maintains restrictions on the distribution of U.S. cultural products, which make it difficult for the French public to enjoy them.  Take television. France sets broadcast quotas that, according to the United States Trade Representative's office, form "a significant barrier to access of U.S. programs to the French market." France uses a similar quota system to limit "the broadcast share of American music" on French radio stations. The French government, in effect, thinks it knows what French people should be watching and listening to.