[anacoluthe]

Maybe it is a response to a more global situation. Please look into corruption charges and fines of US Justice on European companies such as Alcatel, Société Générale, Alstom and you'll that these fines are quite a good instrument to weaken strategic European competitors (and the opposite is true as well) and even take them over. Example: https://www.economist.com/business/2019/01/17/how-the-americ...

[jquery]

Very interesting, looks the fines are tit for tat from a game theoretic perspective. It seems the headlines are dominated by fines of American enterprises but that doesn’t paint a full picture.