(And of course, it's also the case that "selling to an EU resident" is substantially broader than "doing business in the EU" - EU residents do often travel to foreign countries and provide personal data to stores they transact with while there.)
In practice, it is easy to pick out the situations in which there is "practical" universal jurisdiction, vs "theoretical" universal jurisdiction.
A Colorado company selling locally in Colorado falls in the "theoretical" bucket.
Some do, but...
> (for example, the Bill of Rights doesn't say, "unless you are located outside the US").
The Bill of Rights is a set of constraints on the US government, so even to the extent it applies to the government when acting outside of its borders [0], it isn’t an imposition of US law on the territory of other countries, but a limit on such imposition.
[0] And it doesn't fully, see, e.g., Johnson v. Eisentrager, 339 U.S. 763 (1950), subsequently limited somewhat with the core holding retained in Boumediene v. Bush, 553 U.S. 723 (2008).
1. GDPR applies to EU residents in the EU. The protection does not apply to EU residents going on trips to the US.
2. Based on the examples they've presented, there is a SUPER clean solution to your concerns. Geo-blocking. Problem solved, bye bye GDPR. But don't go crying for EU citizen money, can't have it both ways.
Just read the examples they present, they're fairly well written.
> But the GDPR does not apply to occasional instances. Rather, regulators look for other clues to determine whether the organization set out to offer goods and services to people in the EU. To do so, they’ll look for things like whether, for example, a Canadian company created ads in German or included pricing in euros on its website. In other words, if your company is not in the EU but you cater to EU customers, then you should strive to be GDPR compliant.
2. As a general rule Europeans are MUCH less lawsuit addicted than Americans. Plus the way the GDPR works is that generally complaints are filed with a government agency that investigates.
You analysis starts from a position of deep fear.
