You would expect Boeing to be gathering data from its global fleet as part of its normal product safety activities because it is core to any airworthiness assurance process. It follows that the FAA, as the lead regulator for MAX certification and continuous airworthiness, should be kept informed about the global picture by the manufacturer. As a hypothetical example, it would be madness for the FAA not to be involved in the issue of a service bulletin that only fixed problems with the left inboard spoiler for aircraft based in Europe because that is where all the occurrences had been reported.
The MAX fleet is still small, it is still very early in its service life, and it should not be a surprise that (possibly) the only 2 known failures of the system have occurred outside the USA. But if the Administrator is taking the view that 'it hasn't happened here so it doesn't count', confidence in the CAW process is going to take an even bigger hit.