> but would instead referee a common set of European rules. That sounds less like innovation and more like regulation to hinder foreign companies. The US should retaliate economically if that becomes the case.
Realistically that will just yield guidelines on GDPR compliance, which was already adopted by major providers, and interoperability. Even if this non-political actor would lead to regulatory advice, we already have similar guidelines in areas like security, framing that alone as anti-competitive seems somewhat odd. I doubt a major cloud provider is "hindered" by suggestions such as "give your users something to control where their data goes" / "give your users the ability to get their data back out of your infrastructure". Startups might have problems work existing regulation that essentially says "make sure this data doesn't leave the country/union" but I don't see much difference to investing in any other compliance on the other side of the pond there.