If you aren't in the Union, it applies to you if either [1]:

(a) you are processing data of data subjects who are in the union related to the offering of goods or services to such data subjects, or

(b) you are processing data of data subjects who are in the union related to monitoring of their behavior as far as their behavior takes place within the Union.

If you can avoid both of these, then I believe you can pretty much ignore GDPR.

If you have "no interest in doing business in Europe", it should be easy to avoid falling under (a). Recital 23 [2] discusses what it means to be "related to the offering of goods or services" to data subjects in the Union.

It means that you have to envisage offering services to such people. The mere accessibility of your website to EU people, or having an email or other contact details in the EU, is insufficient to show such intent. If you offer your website in EU languages that are not generally used in your non-EU country, accept EU currencies, mention your EU customers on your site, and things like that, will strongly suggest you are offering them goods and services.

What monitoring of their behavior means is discussed in Recital 24 [3]. It basically means tracking a person for profiling or analyzing or predicting their personal preferences, behaviors and attitudes.

Most sites selling things to end users probably don't need to do any such behavioral monitoring. If you do, just do a geoip check and exclude EU IPs. If you aren't trying to do business in Europe you probably want to do that anyway, because EU visitors are just noise in your data.

[1] https://gdpr-info.eu/art-3-gdpr/

[2] https://gdpr-info.eu/recitals/no-23/

[3] https://gdpr-info.eu/recitals/no-24/

geoip based blocking is wrong. An American customer can be travelling in Europe and be blocked while any EU citizen can use a proxy or VPN to workaround your geoip block.

If you can live with infuriating a small portion of your customers while have a protection that can be circumvented in a matter of seconds then geoip block is what you want, otherwise ...

As wan23 already noted, the purpose of the geoip block is to help establish that you are not offering goods or services to data subjects in the Union, in order to not fall under GDPR territorial jurisdiction (see Article 3).

Yes, that will also catch some of your existing US customers when they travel to Europe. However, you may actually want that, because the GDPR does not talk about EU citizens. It talks about data subjects "in the Union".

I haven't seen anything about what makes someone who is physically present in the EU count as being "in the Union" for GDPR purposes. One who wants to be cautious might want to count anyone physically in the EU as being "in the Union" for GDPR purposes until there is definitive guidance otherwise.

It's an efficient way to protect yourself from the regulation. You don't need to prevent Europeans from using your site, you just need to be able to say reasonably that you don't intend to operate in the EU.

Maybe you do business with someone that does have a footprint in the EU? They can put the screws to them I guess.

I imagine visiting an EU member would be unwise as well.

As much as I dislike Donald Trump, I am willing to hold my nose here and suggest encouraging the Trump Administration to go full MAGA and direct Congress to pass laws explicitly stating that no foreign judgements or fines may be enforced on US citizens.

boom.

1000% increase in foreigners moving/ starting technology companies in the US.

seriously tho. great idea.

Yes, and then they just wait until you show up on their soil (say, on vacation) and arrest you then.

Remember Assange? He's fine as long as he stays in the embassy, but step into the back alley for a smoke and he's off to the hoosegow.

I think we understand where you're coming from, but as written this is incredibly ignorant. You're essentially rejecting all international law (copyright, patent, tax, etc).