Data for people in $country must stay in $country is essentially a border. It’s not about the actual protections but the fact that the EU considers data that would be legal to collect and store in the EU illegal to store in the US.

Well if data wasn't being mishandled, poorly managed and devalued without any legal repercussion we wouldn't have reached this point.

Plus it's not in $country is in $region, if all countries made an effort to adopt GDPR data could be stored anywhere.

EU is looking for their citizens data, since no one else seems to care that much (other than China but for completely different reasons).

Unless you think that the protocol of tech giants to poor data protection is fine, when they are saying:

"Ups, we're sorry :(... it won't happen again!"