U.S. President Joe Biden has met with European leaders in a summit designed to strengthen EU-U.S. cooperation on transnational issues and calming trade relations after four years of Donald Trump administration.

President Biden made a two-hour stopover at the European Council's Brussels HQ in a meeting scheduled between a NATO summit and a much-anticipated tete-a-tete with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Geneva on Wednesday.  

China was on the agenda during Tuesday's meeting in Brussels, where leaders sought to address areas influenced by China's growing global influence. These included COVID-19, supply chain resilience, digital regulation and climate change.  

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A new EU-U.S. trade and technology council was announced, which is designed to boost transatlantic cooperation in those areas.  

A key breakthrough ahead of the meeting came as a 17-year trade dispute over airline subsidies was resolved.  

Negotiating teams had been working towards a permanent accord, but during frenetic overnight negotiations on Monday night, they settled on a five-year peace plan which will see the suspension of retaliatory tariffs and joint principles laid out on aviation subsidies.  

EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said the agreement "opens a new chapter in our relationship, because we move from litigation to cooperation after almost 20 years of disputes.”  

The U.S. said resolving trade tensions would allow both sides to focus on concerns over China - namely its production levels of metals and development of large passenger jet-craft.  

U.S. Trade Representative Katherine Tai, who led the trade delegation, told reporters after the deal that the two sides had fallen behind in industrial development as a result of the conflict. 

"For almost 20 years, we have been at each other's throats in terms of the terms of competition. While we have been engaged in this fight, others have been taking the opportunity to launch their own industries. We've been too busy fighting each other to pay attention," she said.

China's foreign ministry spokesperson to the US-EU summit, responded with a statement. "How the U.S. and the EU grow their bilateral relationship is their own business, but they should not make an issue out of China at every turn, hype up the so-called 'China threat' out of thin air and make China a target when it's not even in the room," said Zhao Lijian.

"Still less should they form a small clique against China. This narrow-minded mentality is beneath the U.S. and the EU."

The EU has also given Washington a December deadline to remove its Trump-era duties, with the bloc lifting tariffs on U.S. steel and aluminum for six months. 

However, the U.S. may find it tougher to remove the metals tariffs, which apply to other countries as well as China, because they are still backed by many U.S. metal producers and workers.