Los Angeles mayoral candidate Nithya Raman says she supports President Trump’s call for a nationwide film and TV tax incentive as California’s creative economy sheds tens of thousands of jobs.
City Councilmember Nithya Raman, running to lead Los Angeles, told a recent Breaking Points podcast she would back President Donald Trump’s push for Congress to approve a federal tax incentive aimed at film and television production.
California Post reported that Raman framed the idea as practical help for an industry hammered by high California costs and competition from other states and countries.
“I would be very supportive of it,” Raman said. “I’m going to take any kinds of support for this industry that we can get from any level of government. Absolutely.”
That answer lands in a mayor’s race already trading blows over Hollywood’s decline, and against job-loss numbers that leave little room for spin.
A recent study from Otis College of Art and Design and Westwood Economics and Planning Consultants found California’s creative economy shed roughly 114,000 jobs between 2022 and 2025. That is a 14% drop.
Film, television, and sound took the steepest hit. Employment there fell nearly 30%. Traditional media jobs dropped by almost 34%.
Studios have looked outside California because production costs at home run high. Raman said so herself when she explained why she wants outside help, including from Washington.
Trump has called on Congress to move quickly on a nationwide tax incentive for film and television production. The pitch is straightforward: keep cameras rolling in the United States and pull work back to places like Hollywood.
Raman has not limited her pitch to the federal idea. She says she would stand up an LA Film Office inside the mayor’s office to persuade studios to shoot locally.
She also calls for faster permitting and lower fees on indie-sized projects. Her campaign site says she would advocate “for the most expansive possible film tax credits at the state and federal level.”
Last week she met with Arnold Schwarzenegger’s inner circle at the former Republican governor’s Santa Monica office. The room held Hollywood, business, and civic leaders for a packed discussion on the industry’s troubles.
Incumbent Mayor Karen Bass and Raman have already been jabbing each other over Hollywood’s slide. A poll put Raman ahead 39% to 28%. Bass’s team waved it off as an outlier.
Former mayoral candidate and reality TV figure Spencer Pratt unloaded on Raman after her podcast comments. Pratt said that after losing in the primary, he still met with Trump to push a 25% federal film tax credit meant to “bring back Hollywood.”
He also claimed he worked directly with Sen. Adam Schiff on the effort.
"I got the film tax credit to the President and worked directly with Senator (Adam) Schiff to move it forward. Why isn’t Nithya doing that?"
Pratt went further on results and effort.
"I have zero political power, and I got more done in 3 weeks than she has in 3 years. If I can do it, what’s her excuse? She legit doesn’t wanna work,"
California Post reached out to the Raman campaign for a response. No reply appears in the reporting.
Raman is a progressive Democrat on the Los Angeles City Council. Her willingness to take Trump’s federal incentive at face value underlines how bad the production drain has become.
California spent years watching other states and countries court studio work with sharper incentives and lower friction. The Otis figures show what that competition produced: six-figure job losses and a near one-third collapse in core film and TV employment.
Local permitting talk and a new film office may help at the margins. They do not replace the cost gap Raman herself cited. That is why a nationwide credit is now on the table, and why a left-leaning mayoral contender says she will take the help.
Voters in Los Angeles will decide who manages the city’s side of this fight. The employment math is already in.
When Hollywood jobs evaporate by the tens of thousands, ideology yields to payrolls, and leaders who ignore that math should not expect a free pass from the people left paying the bill.
