Prices are about to go up — again — for the 83% of American households with at least one streaming subscription. The culprit behind this price hike, though, lies beyond America’s borders. The Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) recently tripled the revenue that streaming platforms like Netflix, Disney+, Amazon Prime, and YouTube must set aside to fund Canadian programming, raising the base contribution from 5% of a company’s Canadian revenue to 15%.
Unfortunately, this predatory protectionist behavior by a foreign government is hardly an isolated case. As the Taxpayers Protection Alliance concluded in its recent report “Death by a Thousand Quotas: The Impact of Foreign Regulations on Streaming Services,” foreign governments’ policies regularly result in higher bills for American streaming consumers. President Donald Trump needs to end this madness and push for fairer rules that don’t target innovative U.S. companies.
The CRTC’s streaming shenanigans are anything but new or unique. American streaming services are caught in a growing web of quotas, taxes, “discoverability” mandates, and local content spending requirements. TPA’s report demonstrates that these rules function as a form of digital protectionism that raises costs for consumers, limits viewer choice, and undermines innovation in the streaming market.
