Foreign laws threaten biz

I am just back from a conference of corporate lawyers (I know, snooze, eh?), and one of the most concerning things to many attendees is the impact of foreign laws on U.S. businesses. I am not just talking about companies that have plants abroad, but companies solidly located inside America. More and more, these companies are threatened with significant penalties by foreign governments based on the flimsiest of connections. Take the European privacy laws as an example. They claim to reach any business anywhere that has any personal information about European citizens or other persons located there. And by personal information, they are not just talking about really super-secret stuff — it includes things such as a person’s name, email address or phone number. So if a company located in Agawam happens to get such information through its website, or by email, or even regular mail (it still happens), it is suddenly subject to these laws and is supposed to follow a set of amazingly burdensome and complex regulations which, among other things, impose breathtaking penalties and requires that the company show up in Europe if a complaint is made against it. Of course, the neighborhood florist might just ignore those things, but any business of any size might worry that its goods or money might be threatened if they come from or go to Europe, or are in a bank that has a presence in Europe, and so forth. When you drill down in this age of Amazon and Google, there are very few businesses that are truly sealed off from the world. Those European privacy laws are just the tip of the iceberg. Other countries have passed or are considering other “global” laws to pursue policies that are often strikingly opposite to basic American values such as free speech, freedom of religion, and so forth. It is a trend that shows no sign of slowing down. Indeed, some U.S. states are jumping on this bandwagon. California, to no one’s surprise, is now trying to tell companies incorporated in other states how to pick board members, how to deal with privacy breaches, and a variety of other “left coast” ideas. You may agree or disagree, but it is troubling when one state decides to tell citizens of other states how to run their lives. This problem is not going to make headlines — it is too slow and too technical to grab the front page. But it is increasingly burdening U.S. businesses and, to an increasing extent, you and me. Perhaps if our politicians could take a break from acting like rabid wolverines, they might spend a little time thinking about this.