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I haven't seen anyone argue that "large US corporations are essentially insulated from US law by dint of being multinational". Rayiner claimed merely that: > t

I haven't seen anyone argue that "large US corporations are essentially insulated from US law by dint of being multinational". Rayiner claimed merely that: > the US only has jurisdiction over these companies to the extent that it’s a big market. But in that sense domestic companies aren’t any different from foreign ones with a large US presence. Surely you'd agree that large US corporations are not meaningfully European, and yet they are also subject to EU law. That's how we ended up with cookie warnings on everything and the current fight over alternative app stores on iPhones. In particular, the latter example is the EU enforcing a version of antitrust law on US companies. That shows that "[EU] domestic companies aren’t any different from foreign ones with a large [EU] presence." I can't think of an example of it happening the other way around, but I think that's mostly because US law is much more permissive than EU law. --- Edit because I'm "posting too fast": This didn't refer to "enforces US antitrust law". It referred to "USG breaks one up". That hasn't happened in so long we have no idea what a modern multinational corporation might do in response. I agree "will" overstates the claim.

tptacek 3y ago
If the EU can effectively enforce EU antitrust law on a company, that company is in fact bound by EU law, and is not (for a variety of reasons) in a position to flee to a more hospitable jurisdiction to work around EU law, which is exactly the thing Rayiner is claiming multinational companies do as a matter of course. This isn't complicated: he made what seems to be a flatly broken argument. I think you're mostly just stumbling over how bad the argument is. To recap, he said: * "Trans-national corporations like Facebook are not meaningfully domestic.", and * "If the US does that [enforces US antitrust law], these companies will reincorporate somewhere else and the founders and executives will go live there instead" Note the unambiguous "will", describing something that appears to be completely without precedent in the history of major US corporations.

tptacek 3y ago

If the EU can effectively enforce EU antitrust law on a company, that company is in fact bound by EU law, and is not (for a variety of reasons) in a position to flee to a more hospitable jurisdiction to work around EU law, which is exactly the thing Rayiner is claiming multinational companies do as a matter of course. This isn't complicated: he made what seems to be a flatly broken argument. I think you're mostly just stumbling over how bad the argument is. To recap, he said: * "Trans-national corporations like Facebook are not meaningfully domestic.", and * "If the US does that [enforces US antitrust law], these companies will reincorporate somewhere else and the founders and executives will go live there instead" Note the unambiguous "will", describing something that appears to be completely without precedent in the history of major US corporations.