WASHINGTON—As he prepares to welcome Prime Minister Justin Trudeau to the White House, U.S. President Donald Trump is musing again about terminating the North American Free Trade Agreement.

“I happen to think that NAFTA will have to be terminated if we’re going to make it good. Otherwise, I believe you can’t negotiate a good deal,” Trump told Forbes magazine in an interview published Tuesday.

“(The Trans-Pacific Partnership) would have been a large-scale version of NAFTA. It would have been a disaster. It’s a great honour to have — I consider that a great accomplishment, stopping that. And there are many people that agree with me. I like bilateral deals.”

Trump is scheduled to meet with Trudeau at the White House on Wednesday, the same day the fourth round of NAFTA renegotiation talks will begin in a Washington suburb.

Trump has threatened to terminate NAFTA on several numerous occasions, appearing to see such threats as a useful negotiating tactic.

The latest remark was slightly different. In the past, he has usually said he will cancel the agreement if the U.S. cannot secure a good deal. This time, he suggested that a good deal can only be secured after a cancellation.

Canadian officials have brushed off the Trump administration’s previous harsh rhetoric, saying such words are inevitable in any trade negotiation. And Trump has frequently declined to act on his musings about trade and other subjects.

Trump spoke amid growing concern that the negotiations could be headed for failure because of the Trump administration’s positions. The fourth round, scheduled to run Wednesday to Sunday, is seen as a crucial test of the level of U.S. interest in reaching an amended deal.

Everything you need to know about NAFTA in 3 Minutes. Why Donald Trump says NAFTA is a bad deal for the U.S. and what the negotiations could mean to Canada.

Trudeau will use the meeting to “explain really clearly to the president of the United States that Canada is not America’s problem,” Foreign Affairs Minister Chrystia Freeland told CTV on Sunday.

In an interview on stage at the Fortune Most Powerful Women conference I Washington on Tuesday, Freeland declined to comment directly on Trump or to predict what would happen with NAFTA. She did go out of her way to remind the audience that the U.S. has had a small trade surplus with Canada; Trump, unlike most economists, has emphasized the importance of U.S. trade deficits.

Asked about the weekend comments of Republican Sen. Bob Corker, who warned that Trump’s recklessness could lead the world to “World War III,” Freeland said, “Look, there are a lot of things that are concerning in the world right now. I think that this is probably the most uncertain moment in international relations since the end of the Second World War.”

Trudeau is scheduled to arrive in Washington on Tuesday afternoon. His first event is an onstage interview about women’s economic empowerment at the Fortune Most Powerful Women Summit on Tuesday night.

On Wednesday, Trudeau, Sophie Gregoire Trudeau and Freeland are scheduled to participate in a roundtable discussion on gender equality. The prime minister and Freeland will then meet with the House of Representatives’ Ways and Means Committee, an important committee on the trade file.

Next, Trudeau will proceed from the Capitol to the White House for a meeting with Trump that is scheduled for about an hour and a half.

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Their time together will be shorter and less elaborate than in February, when Trudeau brought a large delegation of ministers and aides for his first meeting with Trump. A Trudeau official said the Fortune women’s summit, not the Trump meeting, was the original purpose of this visit.

Before heading to Mexico, Trudeau will hold a solo press conference at the Canadian embassy. Trudeau spokesperson Cameron Ahmad said the prime minister would have been happy to hold the usual joint press conference with Trump, as they did in February, but the White House had “scheduling issues.”

Trump is expected to travel to Pennsylvania the same day for a speech on tax reform.

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