Trump orders renaming of Lake Ontario amid US-Canada trade war
Donald Trump has changed the name of a lake on the US-Canada border in a provocative twist in the trade war between the neighbouring nations.
The US president signed an order demanding Lake Ontario be renamed Lake America, following through on repeated threats made via troll posts on social media in recent days.
“Canada has been ripping us off for a long time on trade, very sadly,” Mr Trump told reporters in the Oval Office, where he sat beside revised maps on large poster boards, including one headlined “Making the Great Lakes Even Greater”.
“Even the military,” Mr Trump continued. “You know, we defend Canada for nothing. We don’t get anything.“
Mr Trump is determined to punish Canada after its leaders last week rejected a trade deal they said was too one-sided.
Mr Trump initially responded by announcing tariffs of up to 50 per cent on Canadian imports.
Canada retaliated with reciprocal tariffs on US products.
Analysts say the escalating trade war will be damaging for both countries.
Mr Trump’s order means the lake’s name must be changed within 30 days in the Geographic Names Information System, the official database of US place names. It also orders government maps, contracts and other documents be edited to reflect the new name.
Canada maintains its own place-names database and will not recognise the US order.
Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney said the name came from an Indigenous word that means: “The lake is beautiful, the lake is big.” The name predates both the Canadian Confederation and the formation of the US, Mr Carney wrote on X.
“We know that America is changing,” Mr Carney said.
“Their trading relationships, their foreign policies, their national monuments, their hydronyms.
“Canadians also know that naming reality means calling it Lake Ontario — then, now and always.“
Lake Ontario is one of the five Great Lakes of North America, the others being Lake Superior, Lake Michigan, Lake Huron and Lake Erie.
It straddles the border between the Canadian province of Ontario and the state of New York, whose Democratic governor, Kathy Hochul, responded to Mr Trump’s order by saying, “We won’t be calling it that.”
The name change is reminiscent of his order to rename the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America shortly after his return to the presidency last year, on the grounds “we do most of the work there”.
That name change was also recorded in the US’s official place names database. But the body of water, to the US’s south-east and Mexico’s north-east, is still internationally recognised as the Gulf of Mexico.