> I can buy Jack Daniels at age 19 in my country from their local subsidiary, and no-one thinks that this should be a crime for their US parent company because the US drinking age is higher.
Because there is no US law that says you cannot sell alcohol to people abroad under 19. Heck, there's no US federal law that says Jack Daniels can't sell to people in the US under 19, either. And in fact, there are some places in the US where you can legally drink at 18, e.g. Puerto Rico. But if the US congress wanted to pass one of these laws and enforce it, it could.
But the US isn't really unique in applying their laws extraterritorially. See GDPR, Universal jurisdiction laws, China's National Security Law, etc... Every jurisdiction with sizable power does it. Some of these are even more extraterritorial in scope than US sanctions are.
Only applies to EU citizens' personal data, so while technically extraterritorial it doesn't feel like overreach in the same way.
> Universal jurisdiction laws
Rightly controversial when applied beyond things that are internationally agreed to be crimes against humanity, like torture or genocide.
> China's National Security Law
A perfect example of the kind of thing that the US used to define itself in opposition to.
Nations are sovereign and those with the might to push their requirements on others can do so. But I liked it better when we had a sense of the value of an open international order, where things like internet protocols were shared standards that everyone would collaborate on other than a handful of pariah states.