Yes. You can sell alcohol to Saudi Arabians from Canada. You cannot ship to Saudi Arabia. The buyer may pick up in another location where alcohol is legal including in person in Canada. What they do with the alcohol once in their possession is their business.
In which case you are doing business with (say) France, which has its own alcohol customs laws that you have to follow.
I never said that you have to follow the laws of the country of nationality of your clients. That'd be a ridiculous thing to say, and I'm not sure why you're arguing against that particular strawman (the GDPR only talks about EU residents and doesn't mention EU citizenship at all).
The word choice of citizen vs resident is a red herring. The issue is the extrajurisdictional reach of the law.
An EU resident visiting" your business which is hosted and operated in the United States, is the same as a Saudi Arabian coming to the United States to buy alcohol.
This is the reason why the GDPR requests an EU designated representative, so there is someone to charge locally.
> An EU resident "visiting" your business which is hosted and operated in the United States
Except the EU resident isn't "visiting" your business, you're providing a service to them across the US-EU border (and just like any cross-border service there are rules). I really don't get why this case is any more complicated than any other kind of consumer law (you can't sell electronics that blatantly catch fire to Australian customers, even if you're based in a country where consumer laws don't exist).
You aren’t providing the service across the border. The service is in your own country. The buyer is using telecommunications to make an order across the border.
The buyer is the one responsible for knowing their own local laws and should be responsible for managing them.
If a Saudi Arabian couple ordered a gay wedding cake from a baker in Montreal, over the phone from Saudi Arabia, in preparation for flying to Canada to get married, which laws apply? To whom?
Selling to Saudi Arabians and selling to Saudi Arabia are two entirely different things. In one you're doing conducting business in the Saudi Arabian market, and therefore under the umbrella of their government and in the other you're conducting business in whatever market the person you're selling your alcohol is located at, and under the umbrella of that market's laws.
When an EU business buys a service from an American operating in America from their website hosted in America how is this materially different than when a Saudi Arabian citizen visits New York and buys alcohol?
Because the EU business is not located in New York. It's located in the EU. By providing a service to an EU resident you are interacting across the US<->EU border and thus EU laws restrict what services you can provide across that border. I would recommend thinking about it like shipping products overseas.
