Comment by cleverfoo | Hacker News Reader

Comment by cleverfoo | Hacker News Reader

What doesn't get talked about in these articles is the increasing impact to small business in the US.

I run a small business (scanii.com) and I've noticed over the past year an increasing number of customers leaving us to European competitors, customers that have been happy with us for years, using our European region, but now have concerns over US foreign policy and are giving preferred treatment to EU suppliers. When I asked they said, I'm paraphrasing here, "happy with the product but management wants EU supplier".

What this means in practical terms is that, if the tide doesn't change, US entrepreneurs will have a potential buyer population that is roughly cut in half if they can only sell to US buyers. This will have a cascading negative effect in the number of startups that succeed - impossible to quantify at this point.

Large corps can skirt around this issue by establishing an EU entity and trying to buy goodwill that way but that's not an option easily available to small businesses.

I fear rough waters ahead.

> using our European region

To be fair, it was always obvious to anyone with half a brain that "European region" from a US provider was fake-EU.

The problem is that PARIOT act, CLOUD act and everything else has gone from being a paper tiger to real and present danger. No longer a theoretical risk.

So even people willing to previously turn a blind eye to the crystal clear risks can no longer do so.

It is also no longer possible to trust those tasked with implementing it not to bow to political pressures.

A long time ago now, Microsoft (Azure) put up a fight when the US came calling for some data hosted in their "EU (Ireland) region". I think there is zero chance of them putting up a fight today if Donny boy picked up the phone to Satya .

And that's before we get to the example of a Texas court ordering Verisign to cut off the .com domain from a Dutch company.[1]

Sadly I have limited sympathy for a country that having witnessed Donny's first term thought "you know what, we'll have more of that" and voted accordingly.

[1] https://www.texasattorneygeneral.gov/news/releases/attorney-...

Sovereignty has gone from being a theoretical concern that a lot of cloud (esp. AWS) advocates poo-poohed to something that is a very real concern in the minds of many. It's not just US foreign policy either. It's even within Europe--to say nothing of things related to China.

> I fear rough waters ahead.

For 2.5 more years.

The long-term trends don't exactly reverse under Democratic administrations.

> For 2.5 more years.

That would not be a big problem. But the next Republican president may be even worse than Trump. Trump is just the symptom of a deeper corruption problem.

That things will fix themselves when Trump is not in the White House anymore is a dangerous misconception.

What’s the excuse for when the problems remain when the leadership changes?

It'll be longer than that. If during that 2.5 years more and more companies move away from US companies, why do you think they would just abandon the non-US company to move back to a US company? The non-US company would have to be sooooo bad for that to happen. Also, there's no guarantee that the next US administration will be the opposite of the current, and even if it is there's no guarantee the one after that won't flip back.

Midterm may accelerate the process.

No, that’s the new status quo. Even if democrats get in power next time:

1) it’s fairly unlikely that they give up on more powers voluntarily (exactly how much of the patriot act and the post-9/11 rules were given up by Obama and Biden?)

2) there is always the possibility of a future switch to another populist nutcase (or hell, any nutcase really). We are not going to trust American voters to be sensible anymore. We’ll need a couple of sane administrations and long-term polling data for that.

And then at least 4 more years times 2.

> For 2.5 more years.

Who is going to trust US voters with not voting for a man-child?

Remember: Trump got in twice.

Yes European GDP, especially buying power has been pretty flat over last decades. They simply cannot afford US made products anymore.

I disagree, that's a price point concern not a market accessibility one. I strongly prefer to be able to sell to another 400M people than not have the option to do so.

US-made... Cloud products? Like there's anything US-specific or unique about Taiwan made/China assembled computers the instant it's sold by a US corporation?

Since they are cloud products and not bare metal servers, yes, you are paying for the specific features of AWS, Google Cloud, Azure, etc that are lacking outside of US companies.

> that are lacking outside of US companies.

Sheesh, I wonder why.

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