Forget all the stuff out there that says the GDPR protects EU citizens. This is a question of jurisdiction and enforcement. Say I run a blog under a business registered in the US funded by advertisers in the US. A EU citizen that comments on posts issues a GDPR request that I ignore. Their government fines me. I tell them to get bent, I am out of their jurisdiction. What can they do at that point?
Then they block your site and prevent you ever doing business in one of the world's largest markets. I'm not sure how liability works but the CEO may also be unable to travel to the EU also
You then hope you don’t have any assets in a part of the world where the EU member states have jurisdiction over you and can seize your stuff to pay your fines. You should also prepare to have your site blocked for any traffic comming from within a member state.
In short: Unless your entirely US based, setve only US or non European customers, and don’t plan on ever expanding into european territory, there probably isn’t all to much you can do legally.
That is an interesting article, but it doesn't answer the question of jurisdiction because it refers to the GDPR itself. I.e. it doesn't answer whether an EU country itself actually has the authority to enforce it on a US citizen. The US could pass a law that says a website operator must eat a dog turd every time anyone, anywhere, a website runs an ad that a US person sees. Say someone in Romania runs a site with ads and the US government wants to enforce this. The law could even state that it applies anywhere in the world, but that doesn't make it so because the US does not have jurisdiction everywhere in the world. The Romanian government will rightly refuse to make their citizen eat the dog turd.
So the spirit of my question is, where is the stick to actually enforce anything on a US entity operating in the US under the GDPR? There is an agreement via an EO. Is there anything else in US law that could be used to enforce this if a US citizen refused an EU country trying to enforce the GDPR in the US? Using the text of it is NA because the EU can only do things that apply to EU countries and their citizens.
For those that aren't familiar with how the US gov functions, an EO is not even remotely close to a treaty, which has the same supremacy as our constitution. All an EO does is tell federal employees or federal executive agencies what to do. Our president could issue an EO telling everyone in the US to wear yellow hats when not in a building and for the FBI to arrest anybody with a yellow hat. Those arrested would have charges dropped the second it reaches the court because such a law does not exist and it is outside the scope of power of the president. EOs can only act within already existing laws.
Your advertisers who most likely sell stuff to EU people will become party to your noncompliance, and will be unable to use the data you sell them, and may cut ties for liability reasons.
Also some jurisdictions in the EU reserve the right to submit incassos directly to the SWIFT system, but that's mostly used for eg. speeding tickets.
For example if you come here to my country from the US with your car and get a speeding ticket that you refuse to pay, my government will just take it out of your US bank account unilaterally. GDPR fines are criminal fines just as speeding tickets are.
Realistically though, if you don't have massive wealth to bribe people in the US, the US authority will just enforce the fine on you.
Sort the list by fines, and you find US companies paying whopping amounts. Many affect their EU presence (such as Meta Platforms Ireland Limited), but others don't (such as Meta Platforms, Inc.).
Ask yourself if these giants were just too nice to give in, or if they were too poor to hire a lawyer.
If you think both options are unrealistic, maybe the GDPR does have an effect even on US companies.
I think the largest assumption you are making is that the OP does business with the EU. If they do not, they are truly out of the jurisdiction of GDPR and wouldn't be finding themselves on that list. Those fines you are referring to a multinational corps that definitely do a lot of business within the EU.
If you serve a website which is accessible to EU citizens, and that site collects personal data or allows users to enter personal data, GDPR most probably applies to you. IANAL.
"Ask yourself if these giants were just too nice to give in, or if they were too poor to hire a lawyer."
Option 3, cheaper to pay than to fight it. If you aren't from the US, people have pled guilty to even criminal charges because the cost of going to court and fighting it is higher than what is offered in the plea deal.
Option 4, public backlash not worth the cost.
Failure to do so could mean your site can't operate in the EU, you couldn't sell adverts to eu, you couldn't collect payment from EU, you may even have site blocked.
You would need an international law expert to be sure of the exact consequences, but if you have failed to pay a court ordered file then you would probably be unable to travel to an EU country or a country with an extradition treaty. You would certainly face issues if you ever wanted to expand your business overseas.
Yeah I’m that case nothing can be done but say your site had a European operation that would be be covered under GDPR and the US parent would likely pay the fine to continue their operations on the continent
So if you suspect a us entity violating your EU right aka gdpr you can make a complaint to your city's data protection agency or directly via the EU complaints for cases outside your country ( inside and outside EU)
They will take care of it and make sure that you don't need to travel to another country for court stuff and more ( if needed in most cases you don't)
Usually it gets regulated in a way that you can go to a court in your city and the enemy in his city.
So all in all the us wants the EU market and vice versa so both agreed to a treaty to honor the rules of each other
The Trans-Atlantic Data Privacy Framework (and subsequent executive orders) protect the EU citizens from misuse of their data by US law enforcement and intelligence communities.
They do not give EU citizens any rights concerning data held only by private companies, apart from the rights all Americans already have.