Emmanuel Macron says Europe must form a solid industrial union to compete with the U.S. and China. Theresa May says the U.K. will be better off facing global challenges alone. Twenty-four hours of deals and disappointments this week suggest it’s Macron’s strategy that’s working out better so far. Siemens AG of Germany and France’s Alstom SA announced late Tuesday that they’d agreed to merge their rail businesses, a decision hailed by the governments in Paris and Berlin as a landmark deal to create a European giant and counter Chinese competition. Some three hours later, the U.S. Commerce Department announced duties of 220 percent on Canadian transportation company Bombardier Inc.’s new jetliner over claims of subsidies. That decision threatens jobs at the company’s Belfast plant, where more than 4,000 workers are employed, and showed May’s personal lobbying of President Donald Trump had got her nowhere. By Thursday morning, British newspapers were warning of a “trade war” with the U.S. The contrast highlights the diverging fortunes of two European leaders heading in very different directions. May’s much-trailed speech in Florence last week outlined her vision for Britain outside the EU. Macron Tuesday described a united Europe—minus the U.K.—ready to go toe-to-toe with the U.S. and China in economic terms. “I think May and the U.K. are starting to realize that small countries can get more easily bullied than large unions,” said Guntram Wolff, director of the Bruegel think tank in Brussels. “Small countries could thrive more easily a few years ago, when the U.S. and others were strongly supporting the global multilateral system—but with Trump and even an increasingly assertive China, this is changing.” European Alliances The tie-up between Alstom and Siemens caps years of consolidation talk and raised hopes the new company could match European planemaker Airbus SE, which emerged in the 1970s and went on to become the biggest competitor to the U.S. giant Boeing Co. This time it’s state-owned rail behemoth CRRC Corp. that’s the target. CRRC was created from a 2015 merger and has twice the rail-business sales of the Siemens and Alstom units combined. Macron’s government won assurance on jobs before it agreed to back the deal. “We are looking ahead, we have realized that a giant Chinese train company has emerged,” French Finance Minister Bruno Le Maire said Wednesday, railing at his critics. “Go ahead and think that Europe must be divided to fight the competition from the U.S. and China. Along with the president, we believe we must be united and the industrial union will be France and Europe’s strength.” That European industrial alliance took another step forward before May’s difficult day ended. Le Maire attended a Franco-Italian summit in Lyon where Macron thrashed out a deal that resolved months of wrangling and saw Italian naval contractor Fincantieri SpA take control of the French shipyard STX in Saint-Nazaire on the Atlantic coast. “This deal is positive because it shows the French are seeking a higher level of intra-EU cooperation,” said Carlo Alberto Carnevale Maffe, professor of business strategy at Milan’s Bocconi University. “Macron needs the Italians for his European design.” Diplomatic Push UniCredit SpA executives have also held discussions with German officials about a potential combination with Commerzbank AG once the lenders’ restructuring is complete. A combination of Italy’s biggest bank and Germany’s second-largest would create an institution with European reach and more than 1.3 trillion euros ($1.5 trillion) of assets. “There will be more European champions,” Le Maire said, before he headed off to the talks. May is betting that she’ll be able to secure trade accords with countries like the U.S., Canada, Australia and Japan that will allow Britain to prosper outside the EU. May has visited Washington, Tokyo and Ottawa and hosted Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull in July to lay the groundwork for those deals, but she can’t negotiate in earnest until Britain leaves the EU in 2019. The uncertainty is already deterring investors. Not for Beginners The value of deals targeting U.K. companies dropped to $250 billion in the year after May took office compared to $291 billion in the previous 12 months, according to data compiled by Bloomberg, even as the slump in the pound made British companies more attractive. The Bombardier decision may be another sign of the tough battle she faces. Although Trump has promised a “big and exciting deal” between the U.S. and the U.K., the Bombardier decision in response to a complaint by Boeing Co. shows his Commerce Department officials are not taking such a benevolent approach as the U.K. looks to regain its footing after outsourcing trade talks to the EU for decades. Rather than fostering trade, Britain’s Defense Secretary, Michael Fallon, said that Boeing’s complaint was a hostile act that put future British government work at risk. For Adam Marshall, director general of the British Chambers of Commerce, the U.S. is a difficult country to take on when you’re just starting out. “The U.S. trade representative is one of the best-oiled machines in the world when it comes to negotiating trade deals,” Marshall told Bloomberg Television back in August. “I wouldn’t want to go up against them, early on, when I’m just getting on my feet again as a country.”