Hutch...
European protectionism got started across their own borders -- long before America came to be.
It was absolutely no accident that the various nations kept popping up with different wire color schemes... which extended from field wiring on into their equipment internals.
The bit about the European grounding conductor banding is of public record. Paris made absolutely NO BONES ABOUT IT.
At the time of its adoption -- not one single European power had that green-yellow banding. Most were using solid green.
The last time I looked Paris had gotten the Common Market to adopt a flaminingly anti-NEMA standard: namely that if a given product was built to a NEMA standard then it was prohibited as an import!
They argued that the vast scale of American electrical manufactures meant that such a total exclusion was the ONLY way to preserve any market position for any European manufacturer. Yes, it passed -- and has been adopted.
The result is that American electrical exports to Europe have to be built on entirely separate assembly lines -- when they are attempted. (Robotics are now making themselves a real threat on this front -- as they can switch from NEMA to DIN standards at the flip of a digital switch.)
To compound the irony: Square D is wholly owned by a French firm (Group Schneider) -- and is as big as they come. Then you have Siemens... Electrolux...
Electrical products are a major trade item for the Europeans -- and are inseparable from politics for them -- and always have been. Many of their manufacturers were at one time or another state owned. (!)
You'd might be interested in the GE to CitiCorp (First National City Bank back then) to AEG deals that were sown up in the late twenties and early thirties. These provided cross-licensing and equity positions -- of epic scope. The Americans provided big bucks, patents and acquired a massive minority stake in AEG.
It will then not surprise you to find out that Westinghouse and Siemens stood in the opposite corner!
Westinghouse and GE raced around the planet competing with each other. In an accident of history, Westinghouse ended up with a monster position in China -- well before WWII.
It was this position that caused Siemens to buy out Westinghouse, many decades later.
GE, of course, went Japanese -- and is tied into Hitachi -- big time.
With firms of such scale, mercantile politics is never off the table.
