Originally Posted by Koyote

That's not evidence of price fixing -- which would occur if major tire manufacturers colluded in order to restrict competition and set prices. I can think of several reasons why bike tires (some bike tires, anyway) might cost less in Europe than in the U.S., and none of them involve collusion. Also bear in mind that any form of price fixing is more challenging when the products are heterogeneous, like bike tires. It's easier for large firms to rig prices for homogeneous (standardized) products like, say, 2% milk or agricultural commodities, and more difficult to do it for differentiated products like bike tires, again for a variety of reasons.