NAFTA advisory council member Rona Ambrose says the change in U.S. President Donald Trump’s demeanor amid trade negotiations makes her optimistic that a deal will eventually be reached.

Ambrose told BNN on Friday that Trump appears to be “engaged” and wants to get a deal done, which is different from a few months ago.

“He even uses words like ‘looks like we’re close.’ This is vastly different from ‘we’re going to rip it up, we’re going to pull out, this is the worst deal ever made,’ which we heard just months ago,” Ambrose said.

“I say that because the impact of that kind of rhetoric that he used before on the markets was very obvious. We were all worried about the uncertainty created in the economy.”

While a deal may not be announced soon, Ambrose said she doesn’t think that Trump is “going to go through with the ripping up of the current NAFTA agreement.”

“That means NAFTA remains in place, which creates a level of certainty, which is a bit different from what we were looking at a few months ago,” said Ambrose, who is a member of the Liberal government’s 13-member NAFTA advisory council.

Ambrose's comments come as the U.S. reportedly scaled back on a key demand in the negotiations and reduced its proposed auto-content to 75 per cent from the previous demand that vehicles made in the region contain 85 per cent North American content in order not be charged duties.

“A lot of people believe that’s very manageable, so I think there are some positive developments,” said Ambrose.

She added that the U.S.’s trade deal with South Korea is also a reason for optimism, because of how quickly the two countries came to a conclusion.

“That looks like a win for Trump and he walks away victorious. That was kind of a tweak you could say,” said Ambrose. “If we could do something like that in NAFTA, which is kind of the way we’re moving towards on auto… I do think that perhaps we’ll see something.”