TPP Reentry Dangled By Trump, Then Tempered

President Donald Trump's meeting with farm-state lawmakers on trade at the White House Thursday saw Trump call on senior officials to assess the potential for the US to rejoin the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) agreement.But in a late-night tweet Thursday, "Would only join TPP if the deal were substantially better than the deal offered to Pres. Obama," Trump said on Twitter. "We already have BILATERAL deals with six of the eleven nations in TPP, and are working to make a deal with the biggest of those nations, Japan, who has hit us hard on trade for years!"Still, U.S Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer and National Economic Council chief Larry Kudlow will examine the issue, with Kudlow telling the New York Times, “This whole trade thing has exploded,” Kudlow said. “There’s no deadline. We’ll pull a team together, but we haven’t even done — I mean, it just happened a couple hours ago." Trump also told lawmakers things are "close" on NAFTA, but others signaled that statement covered a wide range of possibilities, in that it could take weeks to months or more.