Before Jean-Claude Juncker's visit to the White House, Brussels had been speeding up the signing of free trade deals with other international partners. Only last week the EU and Japan agreed to remove trade tariffs on around ninety-nine percent of products. CGTN's Europe correspondent Jack Parrock reports from Brussels on how Juncker armed himself for his visit to the White House.

Chocolate - especially famous here in Belgium - is just one of a spread of European products to benefit from trade liberalisation due to the EU-Japan deal.

Signing it creates the world's largest free trade area covering over 600 million consumers - and the European Union says it's a symbol of intent.

The negotiations haven't always been smooth but were intensified by the US imposing tariffs on a number of foreign imports like EU steel.

JACK PARROCK BRUSSELS "Chocolates like these being exported from the EU to Japan see duties of up to 30% which the trade agreement will remove once it comes into force. Belgium exports nearly 600 million tonnes of chocolate every year - for them the removal of trade barriers to big markets is a sweet move."

Other products which will move more freely between Europe and Japan once parliaments rubber stamp the deal will be European cheese, wine and meats and duties on Japanese cars being exported into the EU will drop from 20 percent to zero in the next 8 years.

And that's while the EU is doing everything it can to stop the Trump administration from imposing duties on European cars entering the US - a large part of the Brussels delegation's visit to the White House.

MARIA DEMERTZIS DEPUTY DIRECTOR, BRUEGEL "I don't think 'America First' is being served by what the policies are right now. Quite the contrary actually. America will be affected and you see that actually in the American commentary. It actually shows that America will not win from these types of measures, in particular if the rest of the world starts retaliating which I'm afraid we have to do."

Brussels may be celebrating the taste of its deal with Japan but the EU and the US have the largest trading relationship in the world totalling 740 billion US dollars last year. Donald Trump wants to reduce the 140 billion deficit in the EU's favour and has called Europe a "foe" of the United State. Brussels is warning he risks unravelling the current global trading structure. Jack Parrock, CGTN, Brussels.