• House Speaker Paul Ryan set a Thursday deadline for a new North American Free Trade Agreement deal for Congress to vote on it this year.
• Trump administration officials, including Larry Kudlow and Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross, were not optimistic that a deal would be reached in time.
• Key issues are still proving to be a thorn in negotiations among the US, Canada, and Mexico.

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The US, Canada, and Mexico have just two days to meet a key North American Free Trade Agreement renegotiation deadline, and prospects of a deal are dwindling.

House Speaker Paul Ryan set a Thursday deadline for the Trump administration to send Congress an agreement in principle to vote on this year. After that point, Ryan said, the issue would be left up to the new Congress, which could look radically different than its current form.

If the deadline slipped, US Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer said the entire renegotiation would be on "thin ice."

But Trump administration officials don't sound optimistic on an agreement this week.

Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross said Monday that all of the "hot topics" in the talks remained unresolved.

"The big topics like that are still a work in progress and those are very complex issues, particularly rules of origin," Ross said. "Eventually it will come down to every comma, every semicolon, everything before we can figure out if it's something that's workable."

Larry Kudlow, Trump's typically upbeat top economic adviser, said Tuesday that the chances of a new NAFTA deal were 51-49.

"That's not great for Kudlow optimism," he said at an event hosted by the news website Axios.

Perhaps most telling, the three key NAFTA negotiators - US Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer, Canadian Foreign Minister, and Mexican Economy Minister Ildefonso Guajardo - did not meet Monday.

Here's a rundown of the major issues still outstanding:

The end result this week could see the countries announce a narrower deal, with enough leeway to flesh out the other issues during the mandated congressional review period. But Ryan suggested lawmakers want a reasonably concrete deal to trigger the waiting period.