(Bloomberg) -- President Donald Trump named the European Union as a “foe” of the U.S. in an interview following a contentious meeting last week with NATO allies.

Asked to name the U.S.’s “biggest foe globally” in an interview conducted Saturday and aired Sunday on CBS’s “Face the Nation,” Trump turned first to the EU, saying “we have a lot of foes.”

“I think the European Union is a foe, what they do to us in trade,” Trump responded. “Now you wouldn’t think of the European Union, but they’re a foe.”

Trump also listed Russia as a “foe in certain respects” and China as “a foe economically.”

Pressed on describing the E.U. as a U.S. foe -- commonly considered a synonym for enemy or opponent -- Trump said “I love those countries” but “in a trade sense, they’ve really taken advantage of us and many of those countries are in NATO and they weren’t paying their bills.”

To contact the reporter on this story: Mike Dorning in Washington at mdorning@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Alex Wayne at awayne3@bloomberg.net, Mike Dorning, Ros Krasny

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