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Comment by pfdietz | Hacker News Reader

Perhaps Sweden will learn something about retaliation from the US on Swedish exports.

This is not even close to the first time something like this has happened. In denmark unions collectively crippled mcdonalds operations, with sympathy strikes disallowing deliveries, from dockworkers refusing to unload supplies and equipment, to construction workers refusing to fit out stores, to truckers refusing to deliver supplies and food and beverage workers refusing to work on supply chain items. Mcdonalds workers are now paid $22 an hour in denmark

Similar reason amazon simply doesn't operate here. Many other companies have learned the hard way: you simply don't fight the system, give fair contracts, and things work out okay.

Just treat the system as the system. Locate there if your business model works in that system.

If you plan on a "normal" employment model where workers get fired sometimes, redundancy is part of your MO, etc... don't locate to France.

If you plan on being union free, don't go to Sweden.

Walking in with declaration that "you can either have McDonald's or you can have your union model," that is so immature. I can't think of another aspect of business where this kind of thinking is acceptable.

Imagine doing this with building permits or whatnot.

It would be fairly stupid for a country to retaliate against another country because one of their companies failed to abide by local rules and regs. Not that it hasn't happened before but this isn't how you remain a dominant player in the market, such powder is best kept dry for when it is really needed.

Because Tesla doesn't want to make fair deals with its employees?

That's just a childish approach. Why would the US government retaliate? What is this? 19th century gunboat diplomacy?

You really think the US will go to a trade war with the EU over one of Musk tantrums?

You really think it wouldn't?

I mean, the US could have Europe by the balls if it wants to. How much does it cost you all if we pull out of NATO? (I know Sweden is not in NATO.)

Over Tesla? No way! The US didn't even go nearly as far over the Boeing-Airbus disputes.

Also, the EU countries field, between them and the UK, multiple aircraft carriers, nuclear subs (hunter-killer and ICBM ones), modern militaries (albeit smaller in size than during the cold war) and robust industrial base for basically everything. Surey the US quiting wouldn't be great, but it wpuld be an even worse self inflicted wound than Brexit.

Unless Elon ends up POTUS (after all, in Demolition Man they passed an ammendment to allow Schwarzeneger to be elected, so ehy not?), the US won't do nothing over Tesla whatsoever, now or in the future.

What's NATO got to do with it? Really these are absurd statements. The US is tickled pink that Sweden finally joins NATO and three weeks later they go and drop out of NATO on account of a business dispute?

> I mean, the US could have Europe by the balls if it wants to. How much does it cost you all if we pull out of NATO? (I know Sweden is not in NATO.)

Why would the USA want to remove one of its most effective soft power levers in the global scale? For Tesla? Lol.

Why would europe want NATO if the U.S. acts like Russia?

Sweden exports 3x more to the US than the other way around, and of those $15B in exports it's primarily critical infra like trucks, medicine, and refined petroleum. I don't believe the US would "retaliate" because Musk doesn't want to give his ~130 employees industry-standard packages in Sweden, but if they did A) it's not a huge amount and B) I doubt the US really wants to reduce critical infra to help a trillion dollar company strong-arm a union in another country lol

So, you're saying Sweden is relatively more vulnerable to trade sanctions.

I'm saying I don't think Sweden would be impacted by losing a tiny bit of its GDP in exports in order to protect its work culture, but I also don't believe it'd ever come down to that anyway.

Sweden is part of the EU, and thus cannot be sanctioned without sanvtioning the EU as a whole. And that is something the US cannot afford. In general and paeticularly in light of the wars in Ukraine and Gaza.

Either Sweden adopts US labour laws or sanctions?

This stuff really gets people worked up.

If Tesla doesn't want a Swedish location, they don't have to have one. There's nothing extreme or dysfunctional about Swedish labour norms. It's not France. Even if there were, that's Sweden. Tesla don't have to locate there.

Why are Tesla not prepare for this? It's not like they completely ignore permitting or environmental regs just because they're different from the US.

Tesla live by Chinese rules in Chin. That even includes the major task of making Elon shut the gob.

You want to operate internationally... everywhere is different. Not everywhere is suitable. Choose wisely.

If Tesla eats a major delay because they hadn't anticipated the inevitable... That's on them and it is bad management.

Can you cite any historic precedent for what you're implying would happen? To me it's not nearly the most plausible outcome.

This would be a _baffling_ move by the US, and hasn't happened in previous cases of American companies fucking around and finding out in Scandinavia, even when they were far more iconic American companies like McDonalds.

For practical purposes, the US also cannot just start a trade war with Sweden; they would have to start it with _the EU_. (You'd think people would've learned this from Trump's nonsensical attempts to make trade deals with individual EU countries.)

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