US President Donald Trump signed an executive order on Thursday officially renaming Lake Ontario to "Lake America." The controversial move arrives amid a bitter and rapidly escalating trade war between the United States and Canada.
The order directs the US Department of the Interior to immediately update the federal Geographic Names Information System. While Trump cannot force Canada to adopt the new name and the change applies to all US federal nomenclature. Lake Ontario one of North America's five Great Lakes is shared between the US state of New York and the Canadian province of Ontario with approximately 52% of its surface area located in Canada.
Despite telling reporters in the Oval Office that the renaming was not intended as a "message" to Ottawa, Trump heavily criticized Canada’s trade policies. He accused the neighboring country of "ripping us off" for decades and failing to contribute adequately to North American defense.
The diplomatic feud reached a boiling point last week when bilateral trade negotiations collapsed. In response, Washington imposed sweeping 50% tariffs on $20 billion worth of Canadian goods. Canada swiftly fired back on Tuesday placing retaliatory tariffs on a matching $20 billion of US industrial and consumer products.
During the signing, Trump threatened further substantial tariffs on Canadian automobiles with stating “We don’t want them to make cars for the United States of America.”
The President compared Thursday’s directive to his January 2025 executive order which rebranded the Gulf of Mexico as the “Gulf of America” for US federal purposes. He also jokingly floated the idea of renaming the Atlantic and Pacific oceans.
The office of Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney has not yet issued an official response to the renaming directive.
