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A company like Apple during their early start up phase would have been in serious trouble in Germany/EU. The WEEE thing for example is not
bad per se (I am rather an eco fundamentalist), but the maintainace overhead in doing so is pretty high. Look to switzerland for example there it is way easier: You have no fix fees, you apply for a number and then pay as you sell. All done via a simple web based form.
In Germany you have steep costs for registration (at least it decreased a lot for small companies with some service companies, I use a Bitcomservice): I have to pay around 700 EUR this year for bureuacracy, while the actual recycling cost is just about 20 EUR.

For CE it's smilar: I need to provide all my test files (done to some not even public regulations, i.e. you have to pay for reading the test protocol that you have to conduct) publically while as a company outside the EU I just can print fantasy CE sign on my goods and voilá. Illegal, but hard to trap. Or exporting even within the EU: I need to report each month how many goods are send to where and whom (B2B). All the tax things come additionally.
It's not that I think this is all total BS, but some things could get simplified. In the US it's way easier to start a business, to grow from a very small scale to something bigger. Here you have to think big from the beginning to scale the cost and effort.