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?
Customers don't have to be in Europe, it applies to european citizens living in your country.
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.
