Awkward Family Dinner: Blunt Talk in Brussels Targeting Trump

BRUSSELS – European officials are still going through the stages of grief, more than a year after President Donald Trump was elected, stuck somewhere between anger and denial. They took out their frustrations over the latest Trump tariff moves on the few administration officials who braved the German Marshall Fund’s annual forum in Brussels.

The meeting, held in the grey fleur-de-lis-covered Wiltcher’s Steigenberger Hotel in the heart of the European Union’s de facto capital, used to be a must-attend destination for the Obama administration: a forum synonymous with NATO, Transatlantic defense against the rising threat of Moscow and robust trade cooperation.