There was some kind of settlement a few years back.

Can't say I celebrated it either.

And they're processing transactions through EU banks. Don't want to follow EU law? Then you don't get to collect EU money. Half a dozen phone calls, and Ali isn't doing business in the EU at all.

But they're collecting payment via banks in the EU, who will not hesitate to tell those banks to refuse all transactions from Ali if they feel the need to.

If they're shipping physical product, that product goes through Customs at the EU border. Or it doesn't go through, as the case may be.

There was an extended period of time that executives for DeBeers (the diamond company) couldn't enter the US without being arrested for anti-trust violations. It's not an idle threat.

There's also the option of just refusing to allow any goods to enter the EU from Ali, period.

Amazon's search function is pretty much useless and has been for a while. The best way to find the specific product you're looking for on Amazon is to search on Google (and that's not exactly great, it just sucks less than Amazon's search).

Who says? I'm sure the impact will wake them up.

The only thinking involved is wishful thinking.

The counterpoint to that is the more stable and prosperous the US is, the more the people of China will want to be like the US, and that is a huge threat to the current power structure in China. They may well not want a total collapse of the US economy, but having it take a big hit and a visible reduction in the standard of living would enhance stability in China, which is the first concern.

Or a tiny handful of billionaires pay billions each. Yes. I see where it's headed.

You, clearly, do not.

That may well be the goal of the Chinese government. They can see the multi-trillion dollar bubble as well as anyone, and they can see it's getting close to bursting. A little push at the right time, and it's the 2008 banking collapse all over again, at a time when the US government is nowhere near as able to bail them out, with administration that will try desperately nonetheless.

And in other parts of the world, that's less than people spend on coffee every month.

Do you really expect that the cost must be distributed evenly across all people worldwide?

We tried that with Radio Free America. One of the few "news" services that openly admitted they were just propaganda.

Turns out, that wasn't that useful either.

News is a business. And it's not the business of selling news. It's the business of selling advertising. And selling advertising is all about demographics and nothing else.

You want eyeballs to sell to advertisers? You have to attract viewers that match the demographics your advertisers want to advertise to. That means your "news" programs must be echo chambers, telling people what they want to hear, and the most proven method to attract viewers is to peddle FUD via outrage monkeys.

There is no "left wing media" or "right wing media," there's only "Madison Avenue media" who have divided up the demographics they advertise to between them. They people who run the news programs really don't care about politics, because the moment they do, they go bankrupt. It's a dying business, and there's no margin left for personal agendas.

While simultaneously claiming that their protected status wasn't taken into account.

Hopefully, the actual complaint makes more sense. But I have doubts.