| President Donald Trump’s trade war has sent policymakers, corporate executives and traders on a roller-coaster ride. Bloomberg TV’s Oliver Crook has been traveling with European leaders and charting their reaction. Plus: The role of private equity in sports, one of the men behind the Yellowstone juggernaut, and Ukrainians in the US on edge. If this email was forwarded to you, click here to sign up. As Bloomberg TV’s Europe correspondent, I’ve spent the better part of the past two months crisscrossing the continent—London, Brussels, Oslo, Luxembourg, Berlin, Paris—attending summits, conferences and emergency meetings. I’ve met with foreign, finance, trade and economy ministers, as well as a few prime ministers. They’re, of course, trying to make sense of what the Trump administration means for the world and for Europe, and seeking to craft a common response that’s strong enough to protect European interests without triggering the mercurial US president. Over the weeks both preceding and following Donald Trump’s “Liberation Day” announcement of tariffs (followed by his reversal of many of them a week later after global markets tanked), I’ve felt like I’ve been witnessing a distressed family work its way through the five stages of grief. Denial: The day after Germany’s federal election in February, I was reporting on the results outside the Reichstag in sunny Berlin. A small group of Bavarians had gathered to listen, and when I finished, a woman approached and asked whether I’m American. I said yes, and she responded with something along the lines of, “You know, we really need your help. We love the United States. We cannot believe what is happening.” She seemed to be urging me to communicate this heartfelt opinion to my countrymen, particularly those working in the White House. I reminded her that I don’t have any special powers to influence policy, but that I understood her concerns. “We really need you,” she entreated me as we were packing up our equipment. “You must know this.” Anger: European policymakers seem to understand that expressing this emotion, no matter how intensely it may be felt, will not serve them. Dutch Trade Minister Reinette Klever came close on April 7: “I hope Mr. Trump is smart enough to know that our economies are very much connected and that we depend on each other, and that tariffs are very bad for all of us,” she told me in Luxembourg.  Klever at the EU Foreign Affairs Council meeting on April 7. Photographer: Jean-Christophe Verhaegen/Getty Images Even off camera, you don’t get a lot of rage, but you do get more than a little frustration. On April 7, a report of a suspension of tariffs came across the wires, and a minister I was meeting with lamented that officials had just spent the previous few hours discussing the topic—work that appeared to be for naught. That afternoon, the reports were discredited, so in theory their work wasn’t in vain. But two days later, Trump indeed announced a 90-day suspension of the “reciprocal” levies. Bargaining: Trade ministers in Luxembourg on April 7 and finance ministers in Warsaw over the following weekend were trying to forge a common stance to take to 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. One thing is clear from all the conversations I’ve had: Everyone knows Trump feels aggrieved, but no one knows what exactly he wants. And you can’t start a negotiation until an opening price has been put on the table. Depression: Well, if not depression, at least a recession. Perhaps the most troubling part of my conversations with the stewards of European economies is that they are totally incapable of calculating, expressing or anticipating the effects of this trade war on their own countries. Except for one thing: It’s not good, and many economists are predicting a downturn that will do untold damage. Acceptance: I first felt the acceptance stage at an early April NATO summit in Brussels, where US Secretary of State Marco Rubio sought to reassure the room that the alliance wasn’t at risk. That was exactly what most everyone wanted to hear, but I didn’t get the sense they entirely believed it. But even as Trump shreds 80 years of diplomacy—and European nerves in the process—you still detect a glimmer of hope among the die-hard transatlanticists. Take German Finance Minister Joerg Kukies. If you hear him speak English, you won’t be surprised to learn that he spent much of his youth in California. With Trump seemingly abandoning the postwar security and economic architecture, I asked Kukies whether it was time to start thinking about a future that doesn’t include the US. “No,” he told me in Warsaw on April 11. “I definitely am a firm believer in transatlanticism. It’s very normal that there is discussion. Of course tonally, we deeply regret that that has turned more aggressive.” That brought me back to the Trump administration’s first high-level trip to Europe, Vice President JD Vance’s visit in February to the snow-covered Munich Security Conference. Vance delivered a blistering critique of European mainstream politics, likening efforts to rein in upstart right-wing parties to Soviet-era totalitarianism. After the speech, in conversations with numerous policymakers, chief executives and even one head of government, I could see the full spectrum of the five stages on vivid display. As the conference wrapped up and participants tried to make sense of what they’d heard from Vance, Christoph Heusgen, a top adviser to former German Chancellor Angela Merkel and chairman of the conference, said the speech had unleashed a “shockwave.” As snow slowly drifted down over Munich, he wondered, “Do we still have a common base, a transatlantic common value base?” TV reporters out in the field gathering news always pray for sunny, warm days when fingers don’t freeze and equipment doesn’t get soaked. As spring blooms across the region, I don’t miss those frigid standups I did in Munich. But I do miss the sunnier economic outlook of even the coldest winter days before the only thing anyone could talk about was tariffs. | 
