Source: POLITICO'S MORNING AGRICULTURE, 5/14/18

Ministers from the U.S., Mexico and Canada will be "on call" this week as negotiators continue to search for breakthroughs on the agreement's thorniest issues.

But the fact that trade ministers left Washington last week without any clear indication about a potential deal has led to some dour predictions about whether a new agreement could be reached in time for it to go before the current session of Congress for a vote.

"They would be staying here. They wouldn't be going home if the U.S. was ready to do a deal," said Maryscott Greenwood, a senior adviser to the Canadian-American Business Council. "We are at the point where it's a political decision: Do you want a deal or not, Trump administration?"

A view from an insider: A NAFTA collapse could send shockwaves through markets, especially for those in farm states that rely so heavily on trade with such vital neighbors. POLITICO's Ben White and Nancy Cook write that National Economic Council director Larry Kudlow isn't sure if the pact will survive.

"I don't know if we are going to get a deal. You are talking to the guy who is the optimist and the happy warrior, and as we meet now, I don't know," he said in an interview. "I don't even want to go with the usual Kudlow optimist. I can't go there."

Another possible case: Hope still remains, however, that negotiators will make the necessary compromises and adjustments needed to reach at least a preliminary deal in the coming days. Most trade negotiators and experts subscribe to the maxim that "nothing is final until everything is final" — meaning that things will fall into place only at the very end of talks as negotiators are willing to make trades in exchange for certain other provisions.

"Once you really arrange the tough issues, you can place the rest rather quickly," Guajardo said Friday. "Technically, you can do it."