When we first went to Australia I bought a power converter in the US to go from 220V to 110V. The power converter consisted of a brick to do the conversion, and a bunch of different plugs. The 'plugs' were two ended power cords. One end plugged into the wall and the other end plugged into the brick. The end going into the brick was just a two pronged male power plug.
Think about that for a second. One end of the line plugged into the wall, the other end was just a male power plug. If you plug that into a 220V outlet you have a weapon. If you touch the end you will be badly hurt and might die. This device, which was extremely dangerous was legal for sale in the US. I showed it to a hardware engineer in Australia and he was shocked. You could never sell such a thing in Australia or Europe because of their product safety requirements.
This is an amazing example of what you can get away with when you only sell your product in the US. You can sell anything in the US as long as you are willing to face possible liability claims. And why wouldn't you when the courts are packed with business friendly conservatives?
To sell products in Europe (and commonwealth countries) their designs have to be certified by CE and ISO, which have stringent safety regulations on consumer goods. Companies that sell both in the US and Europe design to European standards because those products will always pass US standards. That's how Europe standards are the ones keeping you safe.
Product safety standards, like CE and ISO make a lot of sense because they reduce defective product litigation. If you build a safe product then people don't die and don't sue you. It's a lesson we need to learn here. But unfortunately if we tried to enforce product safety controls on US-only products I'm sure those laws would be challenged and overturned by the packed courts.
Oh well, for the moment thank the Europeans for making sure that your copier doesn't take your hand off and your coffee maker doesn't blow up in your face.
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