You do realize that this would effectively ban American apps outside of the US? I live in a country that is quite cozy with the US, yet our governments usually have to reject American software since there is no protection for our citizens. Now imagine that applied to the population as a whole.

Hey that's awesome. Laws should be harmonized or else cross border trade should be restricted.

No sense in giving the market to apps that are illegal in your country just because they operate on the internet.

So Americans should only be as free as the least free countries? Not a smart move.

Americans should be as free as the government they elect chooses to enforce via law.

For decades, the US has been a leader in global policy so there is no reason to think of them helplessly bowing to North Korea in the fu.

in the future.

This would ban all US apps right?

The (proposed) treaty would say they can ban apps which don't respect privacy. It doesn't say they must ban them.

As for the validity of the complaint: that would be handled the same as for existing free trade treaties, i.e. slowly.

You don't think the US government requires information sharing?

The US government obviously won't ban apps for cooperating with the US government, that doesn't make sense.

But other governments should ban such apps. The CLOUD Act drafts all American tech companies into the US intelligence gathering apparatus; all American companies providing services to foreigners are legally compelled to be spies. EU laws that require EU data to be stored in the EU? Nullified! The CLOUD Act undercuts any foreign data residency laws by requiring US companies to hand over even that data which is stored in other countries. All US tech companies are required by law to participate in espionage. The EU should respond by banning all American apps in the EU (but won't, for obvious realpolitik reasons.)

This would absolutely obliterate the entire US tech sector.

Agreed, the USGOV needs to expand this and just like with tariffs respond symmetrically to China's hostile laws against american companies there. Any restrictions they place on american companies should translate to similar restrictions against their companies in the US (actually more restrictions since their companies are CCP controlled to the most part).

So, you will ban apps from ~all other countries.

Certainly Europe would be better off if they took this approach and banned all American apps. American techies have no respect for European privacy laws and will never faithfully follow the spirit of such laws, or even the letter.

They are smarter than a blanket ban, create rules that suite the EU, not just a blanket ban.

The biggest issue with this is also needing to adopt OSes and programming languages that aren't controlled by US companies.

I think the longer they wait, the worse it will hurt.

They're caught in a bramble bush and getting themselves unstuck is going to get them scratched up. But the longer they put off freeing themselves, the more the bramble grows around them. They should have done it years ago. They should do it now, before the "Trusted Computing" trap slams shut forever.

Being in the US, I don't think that would affect me too much, except for, of course, TikTok, which I don't have anyway.

Finally, this hypothetical would say "a recipient country may ban the app." It wouldn't say "shall ban the app." So your country can just decide to keep using whatever they like.