Clarity is the mot du jour here in Brussels, with so little of it forthcoming from Washington D.C. on the subject of trade and tariffs.



European Commission officials have been trying — thus far in vain — to understand whether proposed U.S. tariffs on steel and aluminium will end up impacting their 28 member states.



Last week, the European Commissioner for trade, Cecilia Malmstrom, repeatedly insisted that she did not buy the American pretext for introducing tariffs, that of national security, in particular when applied to ostensible allies on this side of the Atlantic. She said the European Commission would take its case to the World Trade Organisation in Geneva and push to have any U.S. measures reversed; she told me that Trump's position was "politically hard to understand, but also legally hard to make the case."



But after a long-scheduled weekend meeting with U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer, Malmstrom used another bit of neat diplomatese — she described her discussions with Ambassador Lighthizer on Saturday as having been "frank." Translation: far from cordial. And that should come as no surprise, after the Trump administration very suddenly signed off on tariffs of 25 percent on steel and 10 percent on aluminium, a move that not only roiled financial markets in the short-term, but may leave more lasting damage by upending the tradition of well-choreographed conversations on trade that have characterized U.S.-Europe relations for the past decade or so.