TL;DR: The US President, Donald Trump, wants to take over Denmark’s territory, Greenland. In a bold attempt, he threatens EU states with additional tariffs if they do not comply and hand him over Greenland. The EU is currently contemplating counter-measures which include tariffs on US goods. However, the nuclear option is data, it’s always data.

Let’s first understand and analyze the situation in a global perspective. Donald Trump, US’s president and person who paid a ghostwriter to write “The Art Of The Deal” on his behalf, wants to be acknowledged as a peace-president and wishes to take over some territory. As written in Art Of The Deal, Trump knows that even if you do not have a legal case, applying pressure may yield results in some cases. Therefore, he threatens to hurt US citizens by raising the tariffs they pay for EU goods if Denmark does not hand over Greenland to his control.

The EU, being docile and acting slow, offers the same counter measures. They threaten with some of the cards they have: not buying US based goods by raising their prices with tariffs. However, this “eye-for-an-eye” approach would, in the end, mean that we all go blind.

There is, however, one great pressure point. A point where you can apply soft pressure and generate a lot of pain. A mean that could hurt the US more than anything, and that’s Data.

As a general rule, it’s hard to explain each approach to either side, but, the EU looks as data as a continuation of a person’s thoughts, wishes and likes, and protects it by encapsulating it, acknowledging that a person can refuse certain uses of the data even if he gave consent to other uses, and understanding that data is sensitive and may be used against a person to manipulate it. The US? for them data is just numbers. Once you find it, it’s your own property and you can use it. A great difference would be understanding credit ratings.

For a person living in the US the fact that when he takes a loan, makes a payment and buys things, a plethora of third parties receives this data seems obvious. The bank, the collection agency, the store, each is an “owner” of their own data and can do whatever they want with it. For a person living in the EU? this seems rather unprecedented. It is their data. It is no one’s business if they took out a loan, and if they repaid it on time it is again no one’s business. So, the bank cannot sell their data. This gap in understanding personal data causes tension between these federations.

Now, let’s go back a decade, back in 2015, the EU court of Justice ruled that the “Safe Harbor” Framework to transfer data between the EU and the US is invalid, because of how US laws treat data, and because the US, basically, has no real data protection laws. Then, the GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation) came into effect, and the same plaintiff from the 2015 case, Max Schrems, initiated another lawsuit, claiming that the new “Privacy Shield” framework to transfer data from the EU to the US is invalid. Following the ruling, the US had to impose stricter protections, and that’s why US companies can still work in the EU and collect user data.

However, if you want to harm the US, don’t go for its products. Products are only a small part of the economy. Go for digital services. If Google would have to transition its operations outside of the US to continue to collect data relating to EU subjects? It would be painful to the US more than if the price of an American car would increase threefold. How do I know that? look at how Elon Musk rants about it and calls for the disbandment of the EU:

So, if you want the biggest US multinational corporations, that donate to the sitting president, to do something? don’t tariff goods, add a tariff on their data.

(also in Hebrew)