Two of the world’s three big climate polluters, China and the European Union, pledged on Thursday to work together to slow down planetary heating. Together they called the Paris Agreement, the pact among nations to address global warming, “the cornerstone of international climate cooperation.”

They didn’t mention the United States by name, but they didn’t have to.

America, the third member of the trio of top global climate polluters, has said that it will pull out of the Paris Agreement, and the Trump administration has rolled back policies and government-funded programs that were intended to spur the development of renewable energy in the United States.

The joint statement opened by saying, “in the fluid and turbulent international situation today, it is crucial that all countries, notably the major economies, maintain policy continuity and stability and step up efforts to address climate change.”

China and the European Union most certainly don’t agree on everything when it comes to tackling rising emissions. European officials have in the past been vocal in criticizing China’s widespread use of coal: China burns more coal than any country ever has. European officials have also criticized what they call China’s dumping of inexpensive electric vehicles on the global market.

And China has criticized the European Union’s new border tax based on greenhouse-gas emissions, which makes it costlier to sell Chinese products there, particularly steel. Beijing and Brussels also have major differences on geopolitics, including the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

But China has staked out an ambitious long-term policy of dominating the sale of clean-energy technologies to the world including solar panels, wind turbines, next-generation batteries and electric vehicles. What makes the joint pledge significant is that it represents an attempt to smooth the tensions over the trade of these products, particularly the export of Chinese EVs to Europe.