Are you certain subsidizing is the correct term? I doubt it. My understanding (I could certainly be wrong) is that Canon operates like many multinational corporations where each major geography operates as an independent business unit. HQ provides pricing guidance but each business unit is responsible for marketing, including flexibility on discount/cashback programs to enable them to meet their own independent sales targets.
Seems more likely that Canon USA offers discounts to increase sales (e.g., take a hit on unit margin that’s counteracted by increased volume, ideally more than just an even trade), whereas other business units take a different approach. Subsidizing would mean that Canon EU/Asia/etc. are effectively giving their profits over to Canon USA so the latter can offer lower prices, and that would obviously come at the expense of those other geographies not performing as well on the top line. If you were the head of Canon India, would you pass your profits over to Canon USA to benefit their customers, knowing it would mean a negative impact on your business unit’s performance rating? I would think not.
Sorry, but your argument seems less about business sense and logic, and more about envy for others paying less for a product than you.
Meanwhile, people in the US can’t afford new life-saving medicines whereas prices are far lower (zero, in some cases) in Europe for the same medication because the governments control the prices (but also the availability on a formulary), and the governments of India and China allow their companies to freely violate intellectual property law and produce the medications locally. So pharma is a case where US customers actually subsidize new medicines for the world by funding the R&D (and, of course, US customers also support the pharma companies’ obscene profits). [/soapbox]
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