Kenneth Smith Ramos, head of the Mexican Ministry of the Economy's Trade and NAFTA Office, mounted an extended defense of the North American Free Trade Agreement's trilateral nature Thursday.

The tweets came a day after U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer reportedly floated the idea of the U.S. negotiating separate trade deals with Mexico and NAFTA's third member: Canada.

"The strength of NAFTA comes from its trilateral nature: a region working together in order to compete effectively with the rest of the world," Ramos tweeted in English and Spanish, adding later, "#NAFTA has strengthened supply chains across NAmerica in key sectors such as #autos, #aerospace, & Ag among others, benefiting CAN, US & MX."

In a closed-door meeting with Senate lawmakers Wednesday, Lighthizer said maintaining the current three-way trade deal might not be necessary, according to Rep. Ron Kind, D-Wis. Lighthizer told lawmakers the U.S. had made more progress with Mexico in the current renegotiations and may pursue completing those first and then pursuing separate talks with Canada.

The same day, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said his country would walk away from the talks if necessary. "We will not be pushed into accepting any old deal and no deal might very well be better for Canada than a bad deal," he said in comments to the University of Chicago's Institute of Politics.

Ramos appeared to be using Twitter to tell his counterparts not to go down this path. "#Tariff elimination in #NAFTA was key but supply chains are strengthened because the 3 countries follow the same #trade disciplines," he said.

The next round of talks to update the 1993 trade deal are set to begin on Feb. 26 in Mexico City and end on March 6.

The talks have been extremely strained, with Mexico and Canada rejecting proposals by the Trump administration to add a sunset provision to the deal and to allow nations to opt out of the deal's investor-state dispute settlement system.

President Trump and other administration officials have repeatedly claimed the U.S. would withdraw from the deal altogether if Canada and Mexico do not make concessions.