European Council President Donald Tusk arrives for the second day of a NATO summit in Brussels, Belgium, July 12, 2018. Tatyana Zenkovich/Pool via REUTERS

BRUSSELS (Reuters) - The European Union and the United States are best friends, and saying the two are foes was “fake news”, European Council President Donald Tusk said on Sunday, after U.S. President Donald Trump had called the EU a foe on trade matters.

“America and the EU are best friends. Whoever says we are foes is spreading fake news,” Tusk, a former Polish prime minister, wrote on Twitter.

Trump branded the EU as a “foe” of the United States for “what they do to us in trade,” adding “that doesn’t mean they are bad,” in an interview aired on Sunday by CBS’s Face the Nation news program