https://www.dw.com/de/us-senatoren-drohen-sassnitz-zu-schade...
US senators are threatening sanctions against the German harbor town of Sassnitz https://www.dw.com/de/us-senatoren-drohen-sassnitz-zu-schade... to prevent the nord stream gas pipeline from being built. They’d prefer if germany bought liquefied gas from the US. (It’s a bit more complicated than that, but the threat is a new escalation)
I’m as appalled at our government’s foreign policy as the next person, but I would bet my bottom dollar on there not being a blanket government mandated EU IP ban in the next four years regardless of the election results. There’s a long way between tariffs and targeted export restrictions for the EU, and the lobbying to NOT cut off all US internet businesses from the EU would be insane.
If those negotiations break down they may use economic sanctions to show they mean business.
Our government has repeatedly made it policy to block access to software of domestic origin through export controls [0] [1]
Historically I'd argue most nations could trust the US government only to wield economic sanctions against our adversaries, but the current administration has made all nations our adversary.
I can see a real possibility of the current administration enacting export controls on the European Union for a perceived slight against the President, and Congress will not stop him. For example, if crates.io is an American-based software service, there is a real possibility that the US could ban the owners from allowing access from EU IPs.
Granted, the same is true of GitHub, npm, freaking google... but the tl;dr is that I don't think you can trust us today or tomorrow. I don't trust my government, why should you?
[0] https://techcrunch.com/2019/07/29/github-ban-sanctioned-coun...
[1] https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2019/08/us-export-controls-and...