> So there's something else going on. To cut to the chase, it's publishers being ideological and idiotic: they are trying to make some point about EU imperialism and US sovereignty, by pretending that the EU has powers it doesn't have.

Could be, but another explanation is that the newspapers have heard of GDPR and don’t understand it (detailed legalese that they can skip by not serving EU citizens, I can’t really blame them), while Four Seasons Total Landscaping hasn’t even heard of it (weird foreign thing about tech — who cares? We sell spades, not computers!)