alt Hacker NewsOh. Sorry. I work for a rather large company that sells globally. In our business unit we always considered the CE mark mandatory.
I understand your point though. Of course a US company that is only ever going to sell in the US does not need to bother with international marks.
I'd like to reiterate that a CE mark means nothing to us here.
If my house burns down and a widget with only a CE mark is blamed as the source, my insurance company will consider that to be the equivalent of it having no marking at all.
If a company wants to sell a product globally including the USA, then CE isn't enough to satisfy the safety boffins.
The world is a big place, and the US isn't alone in this way: Lots of other countries also don't care about an isolated CE mark, like Canada and Mexico here in North America.
Some other large, important markets like Japan and Brazil are this way, too.
Acceptance of CE is not universal.