US President Trump signs order renaming Lake Ontario to ‘Lake America’

Amid a spiraling trade war with Canada, United States President Donald Trump says he is renaming a body of water shared between the two countries. At a Thursday news conference in the Oval Office, Trump signed an executive order that changes the name of Lake Ontario to Lake America. The president told reporters the name change will take place “effective immediately”. When asked what message he was trying to send Canada with the renaming, Trump criticised the country’s trade relationship with US, claiming it “has been ripping us off for a long time”. “Well, they haven’t treated us well. The Canadian officials have treated us very badly. They’re nasty people,” Trump said. “So the lake change – the Lake of America – was something I’ve been thinking about for a long time, actually.” Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney, who has been embroiled in a renewed trade dispute with the US, dismissed the president’s order in a post on social media. “We know that America is changing. Their trading relationships, their foreign policies, their national monuments, their hydronyms,” Carney wrote on X. “Canadians also know that naming reality means calling it Lake Ontario – then, now and always.” Trump’s executive order comes days after negotiations between the two countries fell apart, which occurred hours before the August 22 deadline to avoid 50-percent tariffs on $20bn worth of Canadian goods. Upon returning to the White House in January 2025, Trump signed an executive order that rebranded the “Gulf of Mexico” as the “Gulf of America”. Critics of the renaming trend, including some within his own Republican Party, were quick to condemn Thursday’s executive order. “With all the challenges facing our country, this is what the President chooses to spend his time doing today and communicating to the American people and the rest of the world,” former New Jersey Governor Chris Christie wrote on X. “Childish. Trump’s name change policy has also been a source of friction between the president and news outlets.