Donald Trump once boasted of killing the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), calling the giant trade pact a “fraud”. Now, apparently, he wants in.

During a meeting with Republican senators on Thursday, Trump reportedly asked Larry Kudlow, his national economic council chairman, and the US trade representative Robert Lighthizer to take another look at the pact – a deal he once called Republicans “stupid” for endorsing.

The move runs counter to Trump’s repeatedly expressed belief that he prefers “bilateral” trade agreements – between the US and one other country – to wide-ranging pacts like TPP and the North American Free Trade Agreement (Nafta), which he has also said should be rewritten or scrapped.

But at a time of increasing tensions over trade between the US and China, revising a deal he once argued was “pushed by special interests who want to rape our country” could offer the US greater leverage in negotiations with Beijing.

According to the Nebraska senator Ben Sasse, a critic of the administration’s trade policy, Trump said “multiple times” that he was deputing Lighthizer and Kudlow to review re-entry into TPP. Sasse said Trump turned to Kudlow during the meeting and said: “Larry, go get it done.”

Abandoning TPP was a signature motif of Trump’s campaign. He called it a “horrible deal” and “one of the worst trade deals”.

The pact, involving 11 countries that border the Pacific Ocean but excluding China, was supposed to create a new trading bloc and foster better relations in a region that accounts for 40% of the world’s economic output.

One of Trump’s first moves in office was to formally scrap US participation in the pact – which had been criticized by politicians from the left as well as the right as being overly secretive and potentially damaging to workers’ rights. Trump’s Democratic rival, Hillary Clinton, had also come out against TPP.

This is not the first time Trump has suggested US participation in TPP could be back on the table. Attending the World Economic Forum in Davos in January, he told CNBC: “I would do TPP if we were able to make a substantially better deal. The deal was terrible, the way it was structured was terrible. If we did a substantially better deal, I would be open to TPP.”