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by mlyle 642 days ago
Same way Europe exercises outsized antitrust influence in the US: threatening to fine US entities, and if necessary deny them access to the European market.

It would be tricky, though, because my sense is that China still needs Intel/Qualcomm more than they need China. At the same time, it would be pretty deadly to be denied access to that market and your products subject to excess tariffs if imported by others.

1 comments

To the poster, Europe does not exercise outsized antitrust influence in the US. Many of these companies have their tax residency in the EU. There is no need to "deny" anything. If the company gets fined and it refuses to pay the fine, EU seizes the money in one of many bank accounts in Europe.
Europe absolutely exercises significant antitrust influence upon US firms.

In practice, yes, as you point out: US firms must have assets in Europe to compete effectively.

But even if they didn't, Europe could deny access to the European market. So there is no reason to try and minimize surface in Europe. e.g. Apple has to comply with European antitrust rulings about app store access, even if Apple were to just sell their product to third party distributors in Europe and not have any presence in Europe.

> Europe could deny access to the European market

Not really, Apple would just get customers the same way they’re sold in any other part of the world that doesn’t officially have iPhones (i.e. Russia), the EU doesn’t have the authority to seize shipments purely based on a violation of the DMA.