President Trump said the "European Union is, in many ways, nastier than China," during a news conference on Monday. Why it matters: The stakes of a prolonged U.S.-EU standoff over Trump's tariffs are high.

U.S. President Donald Trump said Monday that the European Union is worse than China, hours after Washington and Beijing agreed to slash respective punitive tariffs and deescalate their trade war.

The China deal, like the U.K. deal, still leaves the U.S. with much higher barriers to trade than it had before.