(Bloomberg) -- Europe and China have an opportunity to hit back at President Donald Trump and show how far his needling is pushing them together. The indications are that it’s not far enough to cause Trump much concern.

European Union leaders Donald Tusk and Jean-Claude Juncker are due in Beijing on Monday for an annual EU-China summit hosted by Premier Li Keqiang, hours after Trump labelled both the EU and China a “foe” on trade in an interview on CBS’s “Face the Nation.”

Hopes were already high that a joint statement can be achieved after the past two summits failed to agree on one. But even if Trump’s latest slur gives impetus to a shared stance, many EU leaders and businesses remain unconvinced that China is serious about meeting their biggest demand: allowing reciprocal market access.

Germany’s VDMA machinery makers lobby, for example, demanded a hard line against China in a statement on the eve of the summit, saying that state subsidies for manufacturers linked to the Made in China 2025 program make a mockery of greater domestic competition. It’s just one of many disputes from European concerns over intellectual property to EU attempts to screen Chinese investment that make a realignment against the U.S. far off.

“Monday’s summit will show the limits of EU cooperation with China in the face of U.S. protectionism,” said Federico Santi of Eurasia Group. “The EU remains critical of China on several key issues, very much in line with the U.S. administration, most notably subsidies” along with “remaining barriers to entry, particularly technology transfers requirements.”

Interest in the meeting remains high since it takes place against the backdrop of Trump’s unprecedented assault on the postwar global order, with both China and the EU singled out for U.S. tariffs. Trump’s attacks on traditional allies are coupled with lavish praise for North Korea’s Kim Jong Un and Russian President Vladimir Putin, whom Trump is due to meet in Finland later on Monday, fueling concerns that the U.S. is no longer a reliable partner.

Asked to name the U.S.’s “biggest foe globally” in the CBS interview, Trump mentioned the EU as foe number one for “what they do to us in trade.” The U.S. president cited China as “a foe economically” and Russia as a “foe in certain respects.”

While there are signs that China -- facing U.S. tariffs of $200 billion of goods -- is reaching out to Europe, there is little indication that Europe is ready to turn away from the U.S. and look east just yet. In fact, the EU broadly agrees with the U.S. criticism of China, but not with its use of punitive tariffs to force change, according to two people with knowledge of the 28-member bloc’s approach to the summit.

That’s not to say the summit won’t make progress, with discussions due on topics including Iran, where Trump’s decision to pull out of the landmark nuclear accord was criticized by the EU and China as signatories of the deal.

On trade, there will likely be language opposing protectionism and tariffs, progress toward a bilateral investment agreement and steps to uphold the existing order through a working group on World Trade Organisation reform to make it more relevant, according to Eurasia’s Santi.

The EU also now gets to negotiate directly with Vice Premier Liu He, the point person for handling trade relations with the U.S. EU trade commissioner Cecilia Malmstrom is due to attend the summit as part of the European delegation.

Some of the most significant progress may come in the field of combating climate change -- another area where Trump isolated the U.S. by pulling out of the Paris agreement early on in his administration. Agreements are due in the area of clean energy and on an “ocean partnership.” There is also speculation that the EU and China -- the world’s biggest emitter -- may agree to up their respective targets for carbon-dioxide emissions reduction.

“The EU and China share the stance of multilateralism and globalization, and it’s clear their relations have advanced steadily,” said Chen Xin, an economics researcher at the Institute of European Studies of the Chinese Academy of Social Science. “China and EU cooperation now goes beyond trade and the economic sphere.”

Key Infrastructure

Still, deep-rooted disagreements remain, not least over the EU’s reluctance to endorse China’s Belt and Road global infrastructure program, and its pursuit of measures to tighten screening of outside investments to protect critical technology and key infrastructure.

However, there is a broader global context at play during this 20th EU-China summit, one “marked by rising unilateralism and protectionism as well as the ongoing economic tensions among major forces,” Ambassador Zhang Ming said in a statement posted Sunday on the website of China’s mission to the EU.

“With that, all eyes are on China and the European Union to see if they could bring their relations forward and move the world to a steady course,” he said.

To contact Bloomberg News staff for this story: Peter Martin in Beijing at pmartin138@bloomberg.net;Dandan Li in Beijing at dli395@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Alan Crawford at acrawford6@bloomberg.net;Brendan Scott at bscott66@bloomberg.net

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