> Thus is probably more about the EU having access to eu data than not having the US have access to EU data.

The EU governments do not have free access to data in a non-transparent way. That's the main difference between EU and American laws.

> Also it’s not like it’s impossible to encrypt things when you store them?

The GDPR lets you store any data in a third country, so long as it's impossible for that country to decrypt the data. E.g. it has to be encrypted before it's transferred.

It just severely limits what you can build, to a degree where it's probably easier to just use a cloud that can be trusted to follow the GDPR.