But the EU, as a whole, is the world's biggest market and it is a common market in spite of legal and cultural differences between countries. So that's pretty naive.
And if companies think the "compliance cost" is too big, that's fine, it means they are leaving money on the table for their competition to pick up. The best outcome is actually the EU getting some real alternatives to US services that are deemed to be indispensable.
So personally, as an EU citizen, for companies no longer wanting to serve EU citizens, all I can say is don't let the door hit you on your way out.
Except it isn't really a single market. Each country has a unique language, culture and body of law. The cost of taking a German product to France is much higher than expanding from California to Texas and New York. (California, Texas and New York having a higher combined GDP than France and Germany [1].)
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_between_U.S._states...
Although I generally prefer the Dutch set of laws to the American, Dutch laws stifle innovation. The difference in even simple things like setting up a business, hiring an employee, and ensuring compliance with local laws is insane.
Every time I go to America I get requests for random things that either don't exist in the Netherlands or are criminally expensive. Bengay cream here costs €16.20 for 57g, only available at special online shops. In America you can buy it everywhere, €5.84 for 113g. That's one example. You might criticize it for being too arcane, but there are hundreds of thousands. Each one of these things costs double the Amazon price or more for popular products: RAM, angle steel, many batteries, sanding belts, IEMs, pumps, permethrin, LEDs. That's just off the top of my head. Every time I need something it's a game: will I get lucky and pay 40% extra, or will it be only available for 200% the price? Or even worse, not available at all?
You want to sell those things above? Go ahead. A few of them are even triple (!!!) the American retail price, so you'll make bank, right? Start a business. But you won't, and nobody else will, because it's tremendously difficult to start a business here.
I can understand higher taxes make products more expensive - sure. Those taxes provide the benefits I enjoy in a country like the Netherlands. I can even deal with the cost of shipping from America. But I cannot deal with paying double or triple the cost for hundreds of thousands of various products. And laws like this just continue the movement in the wrong direction.
What metric are you using because the EUs GDP is about 700 billion less than the US and going to drop even more when the UK leaves.
US GDP: http://www.imf.org/external/pubs/ft/weo/2018/01/weodata/weor...
EU GDP: http://www.imf.org/external/pubs/ft/weo/2018/01/weodata/weor...
I agree with the basic concept of GDPR, but the uncertainty around it, the seemingly unclear nature of what exactly it means, and the fact that it will be enforced by each individual EU member potentially differently, all adds up. It's just not worth it.
This just adds to the pile, in a BIG way
It seems likely that large internet businesses will probably pay to comply with GDPR.
Many small businesses, whose customers are often mostly regional anyhow, may decide that it's just not worth the cost of compliance.
You cannot not comply with it though.
Why is that? One of the big reasons people and companies comply with the law is that they don't want to suffer the consequences of non-compliance.
If a company has no assets, customers or business relationships in Europe, what is a GDPR judgement against them going to do?
I mean, this should be utterly obvious given that most Westerners are not complying either laws around the world constantly. We can and do criticize the leadership and governments of any and every country as is our right in ways that are absolutely illegal according to those countries, just for one simple example. The EU is free to get some help from China and make a Great Firewall of their own and censor the net, but if an American blows off something of theirs that is legal in the US and they come demanding the US enforce their law they will get told to pound sand. I mean, this isn't even just normal discretion, in some cases Congress has even flat out made it illegal for the US to honor foreign judgements, such as the 2010 SPEECH Act which rendered all foreign libel judgements unenforceable, unless it's a country that has a direct equivalent to the First Amendment of equal enforcement (I'm aware of zero countries in the world where this is the case) or the defendant would be liable if tried in the US, which in practice means basically any enforcement faces a near insurmountable bar.
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/22/technology/google-china-c...
