This is how Donald Trump referred to Brussels, while his Secretary of State, Marco Rubio, stood up his European counterpart, Kaja Kallas, in Washington. The EU's top diplomat, Kaja Kallas, traveled to Washington this week,

President Donald Trump said he has decided to hit the European Union with 25% tariffs, saying EU was formed "to screw the United States." “We have made a decision and we’ll be announcing it very soon,

The language was typically colourful, and the more fastidious historians of post-war history might quibble about some of the details. Even so, there is no denying one simple point. When president Trump argued today that the European Union was specifically designed to “screw” the United States – and that this was the reason he is planning to slap 25 per cent tariffs on goods shipped into the American market from the EU – he wasn’t wrong.