WASHINGTON -- President Donald Trump said Thursday that he has decided to wait to start the formal process of withdrawing the United States from the North American Free Trade Agreement after calls from the leaders of Mexico and Canada.
Trump, speaking in the Oval Office, said he had been days away from signing the order to start the withdrawal process, but he has put that plan on hold after Wednesday phone calls from President Enrique Pena Nieto of Mexico and Prime Minister Justin Trudeau of Canada.
Instead, Trump said he will push hard on a renegotiation of the agreement.
"They called me and they said, 'Rather than terminating NAFTA could you please renegotiate?'" Trump recounted. "I like them very much. I respect their countries very much. The relationship is very special. And I said I will hold on the termination, let's see if we can make it a fair deal, because NAFTA has been a horrible deal for the United States."
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Trump said if he had decided to sign an order within days announcing an intent to withdraw from NAFTA, it would have represented a "pretty big, you know, shock to the system."
During his Oval Office comments as he met with visiting Argentinian President Mauricio Macri, Trump left open the possibility that he could still pull the U.S. out of the trade agreement, "if I'm unable to make a fair deal for the United States, meaning a fair deal for our workers and our companies."
But, he added, "we're going to give renegotiation a good, strong shot."
Mexico's peso and Canada's dollar jumped after a White House announcement Wednesday that Trump would renegotiate the trade treaty rather than end it.
Trudeau said at a news conference in Saskatchewan that he told Trump withdrawing from NAFTA would cost U.S. jobs. He declined to specify what Canada's demands would be in trade negotiations.
"Obviously, Canada is always going to stand up and defend Canadian interests," he said.
Renegotiating or exiting NAFTA had been a top campaign promise from Trump. He said the 1990s trade agreement has "been very good" for both Canada and Mexico but "horrible" for the United States. He has complained that, among other problems, it has allowed Mexico to lure away U.S. factories and eliminate American manufacturing jobs.
"I was all set to terminate," Trump said in an Oval Office interview Thursday night. "I looked forward to terminating. I was going to do it."
Throughout the week, Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross, Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue and others huddled in meetings with Trump, urging him not to sign a document triggering a U.S. withdrawal from NAFTA.
Perdue even took along a prop to the Oval Office: A map of the United States that illustrated the areas that would be hardest hit, particularly from agriculture and manufacturing losses, and highlighting that many of those states and counties were "Trump country" communities that had voted for the president in November.
"It shows that I do have a very big farmer base, which is good," Trump recalled. "They like Trump, but I like them, and I'm going to help them."
Ross told CNBC on Thursday that the U.S. wants to target rules regarding country-of-origin of products sold under the deal. He said Mexico's trade deficit with China is approximately equal with its trade surplus with the U.S., indicating that products made in China are being sold under NAFTA.
"The whole idea of a trade deal is to build a fence around participants inside and give them an advantage over the outside," Ross said. "So there is a conceptual flaw in that -- one of the many conceptual flaws in NAFTA."
A number of Republicans are strong backers of free trade and have cautioned the administration against walking away from the free-trade deal.
"Scrapping NAFTA would be a disastrously bad idea," Sen. Ben Sasse, R-Neb., who was a Trump critic during the campaign, said Wednesday in a statement. "It would hurt American families at the checkout, and it would cripple American producers in the field and the office."
Sen. Jeff Flake, R-Ariz., also blasted the idea on Twitter, writing, "Increasing trade barriers with CAN and MEX will result in lost jobs and higher consumer costs in #AZ. Strengthen #NAFTA, don't abandon it."
Renegotiating or exiting NAFTA requires a formal process. In order to renegotiate the trade deal, Trump must notify Congress. To announce his intent to withdraw from the trade agreement, he would be required to formally notify Mexico and Canada.
Information for this article was contributed by Damian Paletta of The Washington Post; and by Jennifer Jacobs, Andrew Mayeda, Toluse Olorunnipa and Margaret Talev of Bloomberg News.
A Section on 04/28/2017