The European Union’s trade deal with the Trump administration has met with fierce criticism because on its face, it is full of giveaways to Washington and devoid of victories for the bloc’s 27 nations.

But to understand Europe’s approach, consider the lobster.

E.U. officials made a variety of concessions to seal the agreement. Among them was keeping tariffs on lobster imports at zero, extending a 2020 deal that had been set to expire. Other sweeteners included a pledge to buy $750 billion in American energy over three years and a loose promise to make hundreds of billions in investments in American firms and technologies.

Look closely at those offerings, though, and a pattern emerges. The European Union has handed America feel-good triumphs while dodging, at least for now, several of its most painful demands.

Lobsters are a case in point. They are politically relevant in the United States, where the Maine-centric industry is a point of pride and has powerful champions in Congress. But they are neither economically important nor especially politically sensitive in Europe.

And while Europeans offered to freely import the crustaceans, they resisted the Trump administration’s demands that they change other food-related rules to allow for more imports of America’s beef or chicken — far more politically explosive topics across the bloc.

“They must be giggling to themselves in Brussels,” said Marc Busch, a professor of international business diplomacy at Georgetown University who has for years followed food tariffs.