Article content continued

That would raise new challenges, she said. First of all, she said the current American political climate would not make for an easy re-implementation. She said there would be demands for a renegotiation within the U.S., and the parties would soon be back at the table struggling with many of the same sticking points.

“There’s no way this (Trump) administration would do this (re-implementation) without negotiating a new agreement,” she said.

“So you’re still going to have to negotiate all the same irritants.”

The current talks have become bogged down amid huge gaps between the countries — and not only in material things like dairy, automobiles, and public works’ Buy American rules, but in basic philosophical differences on the architecture of a trade deal.

The Trump administration’s proposals would make it easy to cancel the agreement within five years, and hard for countries to count on stable long-term access to each other’s markets.

The president says he’ll cancel NAFTA if he can’t get a deal.

Insiders now view termination as a real possibility, raising unprecedented procedural questions — like what the rules are for cancelling a trade deal and, of particular importance to Canadians, what the rules are for reviving an old one.

The suspension of the old agreement was signalled in diplomatic notes exchanged between the countries. The 1993 notes were brief and vaguely worded. The countries complimented each other on their new deal with Mexico, and confirmed that each would make separate arrangements to suspend the old deal.