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Comment by carlmr | Hacker News Reader

I find it interesting how many Americans are pissed off ITT about the EU fining a US company for malicious practices. I didn't see the same reaction from Americans when the US was suing VW, Toyota, or other foreign companies for theirs.

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There is this idea of “dual criminality” that makes those examples more fair from the American perspective. For instance emissions tampering is illegal in Europe too, the same of which can not be said for their set of increasingly arcane antitrust rules that are almost overwhelmingly used against American companies.

Well, its about time America stepped up with its own anti-trust laws as well. EU has ‘increasingly arcane’ antitrust anti tech monopoly laws because its a pioneer here and US is doing exactly jack to rein in the big tech. I mean why should they, right? Their companies going out in the world conquering new markets and raking in revenues like never before while uncle sam has to kick back his feet and wait for his to cut roll in. Not to mention all that sweet sweet consumer data and spying benefits. EU is not at fault here.

> because its a pioneer here

In what? Bureaucracy?

> EU is not at fault here.

They could try promoting innovation and producing tech companies of their own instead of devoting substantial amounts of energy to squeezing their more successful foreign counterparts. A cursory glance at the largest market cap companies in America reveals they are on average about 40-50 years old vs like 100 for Europe.

> they could try innovation and producing consumer hostile stalking conglomarates of their own

yes, they could do that. The core business is illegal though, so I imagine it to be rather hard.

Dont hide behind the bureaucracy bs. Its common knowledge anti- trust laws overhaul for big tech are long overdue

> There is this idea of “dual criminality” that makes those examples more fair from the American perspective.

BNP got tried for doing stuff in Europe, that was legal in Europe, with no involvement from its US subsidiary. It still got fined.

VW? The VW fiasco was SO BAD that I generally disregard people that drive VW's. The duplicitous VW management forced their software engineers to implement "inspector mode" and then allowed those engineers to go to jail to save their own asses. VW is a despicable company.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volkswagen_emissions_scandal

I'm pretty sure that while VW made all the headlines, subsequent research found that almost all manufacturers of Diesel cars, including Chrysler & GM, were up to the same shenanigans.

Especially as EU is also fining European organizations.

What is interesting about it? It does not making sense to me. E.g. one should see German reaction in VW case and plenty of them were pissed on US fines. Same with fine on BP in US.

Well in my bubble, people were pissed that German/EU regulators did so little in the VW case and were glad that at least the US did something there.

Of course there was some monetary incentive behind it (Hoping that you could get some money out of the case for your VW, too) but generally there really wasn't any "The US just wants to get money from german car makers" sentiment.

If you put it like that it is an actual service. The US is far enough removed to make a reasonably neutral decision.

I wouldn't exactly call them neutral since they have large stakes in Ford, GM, etc. So they do have a conflict of interest here.

I mean neutral in the political sense, as the opposite of completely corrupt auction driven actions free from any public, economic and national interests.

The worst remains BNP being fined 9 billions for actions happening outside the USA, that don’t involve the American branch and were legal where they were done. That was utter bullshit.

I’m still shocked we didn’t send the US ambassador packing for this.

> I didn't see the same reaction from Americans when the US was suing VW, Toyota, or other foreign companies for theirs.

Like US fining strategic European nuclear company Alstom and then buying them and then telling the story of evil Putin...?

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