DON'T CALL IT TTIP
A steel industry source said there were signs in written correspondence it had seen that the mood had changed and that the Commission was more inclined to find a compromise.
The Commission has mooted the idea of negotiating an agreement with the United States to lower import duties, but only once the permanent exemption is granted.
The idea would be to dust off bits of the planned Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP), on which negotiations were frozen after Trump came into office.
Such an agreement would be far simpler, limited largely to tariff reduction, and would not be known as "TTIP", a red rag to anti-globalisation protesters.
The EU view is that the first step would be an assessment of what both parties wish to negotiate, and then it would need EU members to approve a mandate. Negotiations proper could be years away.
Altmaier said the Europeans should discuss this regardless of any exemption.
One EU diplomat said Germany, and Altmaier in particular, risked undermining the Commission and that division would delight Washington.
"He's rubbing a lot of people the wrong way," the diplomat said. "What we think is important is that the ranks are closed... We're not going to pay with a free trade treaty with something that is illegal in the first place."
A further issue is that the United States has agreed permanent exemptions with countries such as Brazil and South Korea, but only by imposing import quotas instead of tariffs.
U.S. Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross, who talked with EU Trade Commissioner Cecilia Malmstrom again on Tuesday, has been on the phone to EU capitals telling them to accept export restraints, according to EU diplomats.
However, a number of trade specialists in Brussels say that quotas on industrial goods are not allowed under WTO rules and that, in any case, the EU demand is that no measures be imposed.
