There are other possible scenarios concerning future RoHS news:

Have any of you ever considered what would happen if a small company
gets nailed by the EU or if they are enjoined into a suit by a big
multi-national electronics corporation after the big boy was hit with
an infraction?  Think insurance.  The big multi-nationals are self-
insured, i.e., they can take a big hit and keep on doing business.  But
small companies are most often insured by an outside company.  If they
get hit with a big sum after a successful "due diligence" argument by
the big corporate lawyers, their insurance company will have to pay.
But because the small company took on huge liability when they sent a
materials declaration to the big multi-national, the insurance comapny
will drop them like a stone.  No more small business - Bye Bye! And I'm
sure the insurance industry will catch wind of the issue and will
either start raising premiums on small businesses and/or they will
demand that any declarations of compliance with RoHS requirements can
pass legal muster
.  Right now, the act of filling out a materials declaration, even
under duress, is fraught with legal jeopardy.  Why?  Because the proper
system of checks and balances is not in place.  Many thousands, maybe
millions of test reports have been issued without proper referencing of
methods and without the proper validation - in other words, the proper
standards have not been in place.  Much of the data on those reports is
WORTHLESS and in fact could lead the user into a false sense of
security - yes, I'm talking about false negative test results.  If you
get a report that says "Not Detected" for everything under the sun,
that's exactly what a EEE parts manufacturer (and their customers) want
to hear.  But if the report was in error, WHICH IS HIGHLY LIKELY, you
could be sending non-compliant material to the EU market.

And it's not only test method standards that are missing.  Standard
material specifications are also missing.  Can you buy compliant
materials to standard material specifications?  Perhaps in a few cases,
but it would be much better to be able to buy every commodity to a
compliant specification.  The testing of parts and components, which
number in the billions or even trillions, would then be minimized.  In
all, the world's supply chains could have saved many billions of
dollars had the proper standards been in place.  But the number of
standards required to take care of the sweeping scope of regulations
such as RoHS number in the thousands!

There is an agreement in the WTO called the Agreement on Technical
Barriers to Trade (TBT).  Many people say that it is a weak document -
that it is full of lawyer-speak and wiggle words that allow violators
of the agreement to survive challenges unscathed.  But I think it is an
excuse used by those who cut deals behind closed doors and render the
TBT useless.  I think if the US Trade Representative or other country's
trade representatives brought the EU up on TBT violations in the WTO,
we could have at the very least delayed RoHS by many years.  We could
have forced the EU to "take a full part" in the development of the
necessary (thousands of) standards as required by the TBT.  But we
didn't.  Why not?

Now I have a little surprise for you (if you've managed to read this
far): I believe the main reason the USTR did not take action against
the EU is that THEY WERE ASKED NOT TO by the big multi-national
electronic corporations!  Why would the big boys do that?  For several
reasons, really: 1) They were scared by what happened to Sony in 2001;
2) they felt any action against the EU would be met with a media
barrage claiming that the electronics industry giants are poisoning
everyone (particularly children!); and they wanted to control standards
development for fear that the EU would mess it up (as if the
electronics multi-nationals could do better!).  I believe they felt
that it would be much better to work with the EU than against them.  So
I think they cut a deal - in exchange for cooperating with the EU on
RoHS, they would have easy access to the Commission for lobbying
exemptions, they would develop the test standard (as if one standard
would work) and perhaps there were s
everal other conditions.  I believe that the reason RoHS went forward
without much pushback was because the multi-nationals made one of the
biggest mistakes in the history of manufacturing.  It was just plain
dumb. So it's my opinion that you have the big guys to thank along with
the EU.

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