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Comment by nickpp | Hacker News Reader

This will only stop when USA takes symmetrical measures, fining large European conglomerates in response.

It's like tariffs - just another form of protectionism.

Is it though?

Companies who want to operate in a country have to follow that country's laws and stick by that country's regulations. That's why Apple have to make islands appear bigger than they are for China reasons.

US companies can't just operate the same as they do in the US in other countries where people seem to have more protection from malpractice than in the US. Certainly from the outside looking in.

The US can only take measures in the US on EU companies that are breaking US law and/or regulations. It's not tit for tat like tariffs which are clearly arbitrary.

> The US can only take measures in the US on EU companies that are breaking US law and/or regulations

And they do: https://www.bbc.com/news/business-28099694

Exactly, thanks for the counterpoint example.

No if we had a decent system for making the likes of Amazon, Facebook, Apple, et al, actually pay taxes in the countries they clearly do business in I think that would be better than one off fines, however big.

Except EU businesses also pay taxes in the country they are based in, instead of the countries they did business in, like, say, the USA.

It was a quid-pro-quo system that started becoming imbalanced when EU failed to create competitive business in tech. But that is not USA's fault.

You think US has no protectionism? You cant even deliver cargo between US ports unless you are an American. And don't get me started on Corn.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Merchant_Marine_Act_of_1920

Let's see the names then of those European tech conglomerates that are abusing their market dominance to disadvantage the American public?

I wish there were some of those "those European tech conglomerates". They'd keep the US giants in check naturally. But the fact that there are pretty much no EU tech giants is not USA's fault...

What’s the list of large EU tech successes? Is it just SAP now that Google bought Spotify?

UiPath is a recent success that comes to mind. Not sure if it's not considered a US business now though.

If the US were to profit from Amazon's extraction of wealth in Italy, I could see where you're coming from. But do they? It's not like Amazon takes the Italian money and builds roads in the US or something.

Not roads, but there are plenty of bribes^H^H^H^H^H^H^H campaign contributions that come from Amazon.

fining large European conglomerates in response

Which ones?

This has happened since 2000, cost of doing shady business I guess:

- BP: 35.5

- Volkswagen: 25.6

- Deutsche Bank: 18.3

- UBS: 16.8

- BNP: 12.1

- Nat West: 13.4

- Glaxo Smith Kline: 7.8

- Credit Suisse: 10.4

(in billions)

edit: formatting

Confused. Shouldn't we be fining companies that break the law? We should be expanding it, instead of complaining when another country happens to fine a company that happens to be from the same country as us.

As German, fine the fuck out of the corrupt people in Deutsche.

All of the fines you list there (I think) are for breaking various law like dumping oil in to the sea, cheating emissions tests, and money laundering. It's good and right that they're fined for those things (though the fines could be higher..) None of them are big enough to abuse their respective markets. The fines are not symmetrical to the fine Amazon has been given for abusing the Italian courier market, and there is no equivalent EU company that could be fined for abusing any US market either. EU companies tend not to be dominant in the US.

VW and Airbus are fairly recent examples.

VW's diesel scandal and Airbus's bribery fines aren't antitrust cases though. Foreign antitrust cases in particular are often criticised by nationalists.

I think that was the parent's point ("which ones?"). There is no EU monopoly in the US. At least, I don't see one.

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