>Spying on foreign governments because you think they might present a threat to you in terms of war/foreign policy is generally defensible (although many on here would disagree with that), while using the apparatus of the state to support select private enterprise through espionage is not.

Exactly. And this is something that has been going on for ages,

To be clear, it's not like they feel they promote "select private enterprises" by doing so. That is, it's not "let's help our pals at company X" -- it's more like "let's give the US corporations a leverage against Mexico / Brasil / France etc".

It already is an unfair (and illegal in most cases) leverage because it's based on huge spying machinery. But when it's also combined with the kind of huge diplomatic, political and military pressure the US has, then it becomes a way to crush competition, in other words post-colonialism at its best.

And no, not "all countries do the same" (a common counter-argument). A lot, maybe all countries do have spying agencies, but most of them are concerned with internal affairs (dissidents and such) and dangerous neighborhoud countries (feuds). And of course, their scale and scope is orders of magnitude smaller.

Only someone watching too much 24 and Homeland would believe that countries such as, say, Chile, Argentina, Luxemburg, Czech republic, Albania, Greece, Portugal, Denmark, Colombia and such have the same kind of spying infrastructure and reach as the US has (and much much less the diplomatic might to take advantage of it, even if they had). It's not called a "superpower" for nothing.