It was not clear whether the president would still sign an executive action to authorize renegotiation of Nafta, which he once called the worst trade deal ever signed by the United States. Washington must give Canada and Mexico six months’ notice before exiting the trade agreement, which came into force in 1994. Any action to that effect would start the clock. 
 
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 But the prospect of the United States’ pulling out obviously alarmed the Canadian and Mexican leaders and prompted their calls to the White House. 
 
 The Mexican peso plummeted in trading after news broke at midday on Wednesday that the White House had drafted an executive order withdrawing the United States from Nafta. Mr. Trudeau called Mr. Trump twice, on Tuesday and Wednesday, to discuss the sudden rupture in the trade relationship between the United States and Canada. 
 
 On Tuesday, the Trump administration announced that it would impose a tariff on Canadian softwood lumber, in retaliation for what it said was unfair treatment of American dairy farmers. 
 
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 The president has repeatedly derided Nafta, describing it last week as “very, very bad” for the country, companies and workers, and he promised during his campaign that he would remove the United States from it if he could not negotiate improvements. 
 
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 The White House wants Congress to authorize those negotiations under legislation that would allow expedited approval of the reworked agreement, but talks between administration officials and congressional Republicans have moved slowly. 
 
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 While some of Mr. Trump’s senior advisers, notably Stephen K. Bannon and the economist Peter Navarro, are eager to take strong steps on trade policy, another group — which includes Gary D. Cohn, the head of the National Economic Council — has argued for a more cautious approach, concerned that larger steps could cause economic disruptions. 
 
 Lately, Mr. Trump has taken the stronger line, moving to reshape America’s economic relationships with foreign nations. The Nafta order would come on the heels of the announcement of the new tariffs on Canadian lumber and reviews of whether steel and aluminum imports are undermining national security. 
 
 “Nafta’s been very, very bad for our country,” Mr. Trump said last week. “It’s been very, very bad for our companies and for our workers, and we’re going to make some very big changes, or we are going to get rid of Nafta once and for all.” 
 
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 Walking away from Nafta would disrupt the economies of the United States, Canada and Mexico, and strain broader relations among the countries. Over the last two decades, their economies have become increasingly intertwined. The volume of trade has multiplied, and the manufacture of many goods, notably cars, involves multiple border crossings and factories in all three nations. 
 
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 If the United States actually pulled out, experts said, trade with Canada would probably still be subject to a similar agreement between the two countries that took effect in the late 1980s and served as a model for Nafta. The Trump administration, however, could seek to withdraw from that agreement as well. 
 
 The shift in the rules governing trade with Mexico would be more significant. The two countries both take part in the World Trade Organization, but that allows much higher tariffs. Mexico, for instance, could impose a 37 percent tariff on American corn. The disruptions to manufacturing could also come at a hefty cost to consumers: Caroline Freund, a fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics, has estimated that the cost of a pickup truck might increase by $3,000. 
 
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 Monica de Bolle, a senior fellow at the Peterson Institute, said: “It would be a very disruptive shock that would impact everybody. It would impact growth; it would impact companies and supply chains; it would impact workers; it would impact voters in Trump states. It’s just crazy to imagine that they would go that route.” 
 
 The suggestion of withdrawal, reported by Politico on Wednesday, raised anxieties in financial markets. The peso fell more than 2 percent against the dollar, and the Canadian dollar fell about 0.3 percent. 
 
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 “Scrapping Nafta would be a disastrously bad idea,” Senator Ben Sasse, Republican of Nebraska, said in a statement. “Yes, there are places where our agreements could be modernized, but here’s the bottom line: Trade lowers prices for American consumers, and it expands markets for American goods. Risking trade wars is reckless, not wise.” 
 
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 Both Mexican and Canadian officials have said repeatedly that they are ready to negotiate changes to the trade agreement. Written in the early 1990s, it is outdated in key respects: Its drafters, for example, did not foresee the rise of the internet. 
 
 “Canada is ready to come to the table at any time,” Alex Lawrence, a spokesman for the Canadian foreign minister, Chrystia Freeland, told Reuters on Wednesday. 
 
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 In fact, the Obama administration negotiated changes to the deal as part of the Trans-Pacific Partnership, a broader agreement that would have supplanted Nafta. Mr. Trump withdrew from that agreement as one of his first official acts. 
 
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 The Trump administration provided an indication of its own priorities in a letter circulated among members of Congress last month. While proposing some significant changes, such as strengthening the available penalties for breaches of the rules, it suggested that the administration was not seeking to alter the basic structure of the agreement, prompting relief both north and south of the United States. 
 
 The administration must send a final version of that letter to Congress to start another clock: a 90-day waiting period before negotiations. Starting both clocks would allow the White House to begin negotiations with Mexico and Canada while holding in hand the threat of walking away from the table. 
 
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 It is not clear whom that would hurt most. Mr. Trump has repeatedly denounced trade deficits as a major contributor to what he sees as the nation’s broken economy. 
 
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 But trade among the three North American nations is relatively balanced, particularly in comparison with trade between the United States and China. 
 
 The United States actually ran a trade surplus with Canada in 2015 and during the first three quarters of 2016, according to the most recent data available from the Commerce Department. American sales of goods and services to Canada exceeded purchases of goods and services from Canada, on average, by $1 billion a month. 
 
 The United States does run a monthly deficit of about $4 billion with Mexico, but even that is a small fraction of the roughly $28 billion monthly deficit with China. ||||| CLOSE U.S. President Donald Trump is boasting about his latest revamped trade agreement with America's two neighbors - a pact he's calling USMCA - for the United States, Mexico and Canada. The deal has a "good ring to it," he says. (Oct. 1) AP 
 
 President Donald Trump (Photo: AP) 
 
 WASHINGTON – President Donald Trump on Monday touted a new trade agreement brokered with Canada and Mexico as "truly historic news." 
 
 "The agreement will govern nearly $1.2 trillion in trade, which makes it the biggest trade deal in United States history," Trump said during remarks in the Rose Garden. 
 
 "It puts us in a position we've never been in before," he said. "This is a terrific deal for all of us." 
 
 Speaking to reporters in Ottawa, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, who has argued with Trump over trade in recent months, said the new deal “will be good for Canadian workers, good for Canadian businesses and good for Canadian families.” 
 
 Reaching the agreement “was no easy task,” Trudeau said, and the work isn’t done yet because the pact still must be ratified by all three countries. 
 
 But free and fair trade “is in a much more stable place than it was yesterday,” the prime minister said. “We now have a path forward.” 
 
 Asked if the agreement would help repair his fractured relationship with Trump, Trudeau said he had “a very positive call” with the American president Monday morning. 
 
 There is no question that renegotiating NAFTA has been a challenge in his conversations with Trump, Trudeau said. But with the trade talks now out of the way, “we will continue to work on things that allow us to benefit our workers, benefit our citizens and take on the world together as a North American market,” he said. 
 
 “We celebrate a trilateral deal. The door closes on trade fragmentation in the region,” tweeted Jesús Seade, trade negotiator for Mexico’s incoming president, Andrés Manuel López Obrador. 
 
 U.S. and Canadian officials announced the new deal overnight. The U.S. had imposed a deadline of midnight Sunday with Canada to reach a new three-country deal that covers a North American market of nearly 500 million consumers. 
 
 More: Canada agrees to join U.S. and Mexico in new trade deal to replace NAFTA 
 
 The new trade deal, which must be approved by Congress, is designed to replace the North American Free Trade Agreement, which Trump has denounced as unfair to the United States. The new agreement includes new rules for the movement of products between the three countries, and even a new name. 
 
 Earlier Monday, Trump tweeted that "the new name [of NAFTA] will be The United States Mexico Canada Agreement, or USMCA." 
 
 Trump returned to the name during his remarks on Monday. "It has a good ring to it," he said. 
 
 Trump said his tariffs were the reason for the deal, and he described opponents as “babies." He said he hoped the deal would be quickly approved by Congress but warned that he never knows for sure what lawmakers will do. 
 
 “In theory there should be no trouble,” Trump said. "I think it’ll pass easily, really easily, because it’s a great deal." 
 
 In a briefing with reporters following the president's news conference, U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer said the new trade agreement with Canada makes improvements in a number of areas, including rules or origin for automobiles, labor provisions, intellectual property, access to agricultural markets, and the new review mechanism. 
 
 Those are also the reasons that this agreement is much better than the United States would have gotten from Canada and Mexico under the dormant Trans-Pacific Partnership, said Lighthizer, who emphasized that it "is substantially better than the TPP." 
 
 White House adviser Jared Kushner, who is the president's son-in-law, praised both the president and Lighthizer, saying the deal “will make a big difference for this country.” 
 
 More: Brett Kavanaugh allegations: New questions swirl around reopened FBI inquiry 
 
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– Stocks hardly budged on Wall Street as the US and Canada were unable to complete a trade deal, per the AP. The US Trade Representative said Friday that the two sides would continue negotiating next week on a new deal to replace the NAFTA trade accord, which also includes Mexico. Stocks rallied earlier this week after Mexico and the US reached a preliminary agreement on a new trade platform. The S&P 500 index edged up less than 1 point to 2,901 after being down nearly all of the day. The Dow Jones Industrial Average slipped 22 points to 25,964, and the Nasdaq composite rose 21 points to 8,109. Despite the lack of an agreement with Canada, President Trump notified Congress that he still intends to sign a trade deal to replace NAFTA by the end of November, reports the Wall Street Journal. That deal currently includes just Mexico, but Trump said he is willing to keep negotiating with Canada. At an event in Toronto Friday, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said Canada wouldn't roll over. “We have been very clear about where our red lines are," he said. "This is something we take seriously as a renegotiation.”