President Donald Trump walks with South Korean President Moon Jae-in to attend a joint press conference in the Rose Garden on June 30. | AP Photo Trump mulling withdrawal from Korea trade deal

President Donald Trump said Saturday he is weighing whether to start the process of withdrawing from a free trade agreement with South Korea, with the U.S. Chamber of Commerce urging its members to respond with "all hands on deck" and stop a decision that could come as early as next week.

"It's very much on my mind," the president said of the trade deal, according to a press pool report, adding that he is discussing the matter with his advisers. Earlier Saturday, a senior administration official confirmed that the president's divided team is debating the future of the agreement.


The administration official cautioned that a final decision has not yet been made, but opponents of the trade deal are quietly preparing options for a withdrawal.

Some of Trump's top advisers — including National Economic Council Chairman Gary Cohn — have privately raised red flags about pulling out of the agreement. It's the latest infighting over trade among the president's influential advisers.

Neither the White House nor the Office of U.S. Trade Representative confirmed or denied the possible move. The news was first reported Friday night by Inside U.S. Trade and then reported earlier Saturday by T he Wall Street Journal and The Washington Post.

However, administration officials noted that the United States and South Korea have been in talks on revamping the pact, also known as KORUS. "Discussions are ongoing, but we have no announcements at this time," a White House spokeswoman said.

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Chamber officials, in their memo to members, said they "and others in the U.S. business and agriculture community have received multiple reports that the administration is prepared to send a letter to the South Korean government on Tuesday, September 5—or possibly sooner—indicating its intent to withdraw from the bilateral trade agreement."

"We encourage you to urgently arrange for calls by senior executives to the White House and other senior administration officials urging them not to proceed. If you can mobilize Republican governors or other opinion leaders who can make the geo-strategic security argument, now is the time. This is an all hands on deck effort."

The National Cattlemen's Beef Association also sent out on Saturday an urgent appeal to its members to speak up in defense of the pact.

"I understand this is a holiday weekend," Kent Bacus, director of international trade and market access for NCBA, said in an email. "But we need you to engage now and start contacting your representatives, senators, governors and whoever else you can think of to warn President Trump that this would be a terrible move for the U.S. beef industry and the agriculture community."

During last year's campaign, Trump criticized both NAFTA and the South Korea agreement as bad trade deals.

The United States, Canada and Mexico formally launched talks last month on renegotiating NAFTA, and are holding a second round this week in Mexico City.

The United States and South Korea held a special session of the KORUS Joint Committee on Aug . 22 to discuss potential changes to the pact. That meeting was arranged after Trump met with South Korea's new president, Moon Jae-in, in late June.

Two months before that meeting, Trump had threatened to withdraw from KORUS, triggering concern throughout the business community.

The meeting between United States Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer and South Korean Trade Minister Kim Hyun-jong appears to have gone badly, the Chamber memo said.

Kim, like most economists, rejected Trump's assertion that KORUS was to blame for the United States' widening trade deficit with South Korea over the first years of the pact and demanded to know Trump's real motive in seeking a renegotiation, the Chamber memo said.

A USTR statement issued after the Aug . 22 meeting acknowledged the important economic relationship between the two countries, then cited a litany of concerns about the KORUS agreement.

“Unfortunately, too many American workers have not benefited from the agreement," Lighthizer said. "USTR has long pressed the Korean government to address burdensome regulations which often exclude U.S. firms or artificially set prices for American intellectual property.

"President Trump is committed to substantial improvements in the Korean agreement that address the trade imbalance and ensure that the deal is fully implemented," Lighthizer added. But he also noted the renegotiation was an opportunity to address those concerns.

For their part, Chamber officials are warning of possible job los ses in the agriculture and manufacturing sector if Trump were to withdraw from the pact, as well as to damage to U.S. ' reputation when it is trying to rally support in the region to rein in North Korea's nuclear program.

Trump’s main complaints with the five-year-old trade deal surround the rules of origin, particularly in the autos sector, one private-sector source close to the discussions said.

The White House’s concerns with the deal are at odds with many inside the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative, the source added, saying that there is significant opposition against making any major changes to the deal, even any renegotiations.

A broader coalition, known as the U.S. Food and Agriculture Dialogue for Trade, also urged its members on Saturday to furiously lobby public officials in favor of staying in the pact.

Beyond going against the wishes of many in the private sector, starting a full-scale renegotiation would overburden the comparatively small government agency, where negotiators are already spending every weekend through December meeting to work on the ongoing NAFTA renegotiation, the source said.

Lighthizer himself is deeply involved in the NAFTA talks and will be in Mexico on Monday and Tuesday for a meeting with Mexican Economy Minister Ildefonso Guajardo and Canadian Foreign Minister Chrystia Freeland at the end of the second round.

Cristiano Lima contributed to this report.