President Donald Trump signed an order on Thursday to change the name of Lake Ontario to “Lake America” as tensions rise in trade between the United States and Canada.
The order instructs the Secretary of the Interior to begin removing all mentions of Lake Ontario from U. S. government records within 30 days.
He had mentioned before that he was thinking about renaming the Great Lake prior to this order.
“The United States is giving serious consideration to changing the name of Lake Ontario to Lake America, as we don’t expect to do much business with Ontario any longer,” Trump posted on Truth Social on Tuesday.
On Thursday, Trump escalated his comments by referring to Canadian officials as “nasty people.”
“People oftentimes they’ll ask me, ‘Who’s the worst to deal with on trade?’ And I say, ‘That’s easy – Canada.’ They feel entitled, and we can’t have that,” Trump stated.
Last week, President Trump imposed additional tariffs on goods from Canada. Shortly after, the Canadian government announced it would respond with matching tariffs up to 50% as a direct countermeasure.
The tariffs are expected to impact $20 billion in goods.
Both countries have interconnected supply chains where cars and other products often cross back and forth across the border for manufacturing purposes.
Ontario is Canada’s most populated province, home to around 16.1 million residents.
Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney opposed this decision and explained the origin of the name Lake Ontario.
“The name Lake Ontario comes from the Wendat word Ontari’io, which, appropriately, means “the lake is beautiful, the lake is big,” he shared on X. “The name is more than 400 years old, predating both the Confederation of Canada and the Declaration of Independence of the United States of America. We know that America is changing. 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.”
This isn’t Trump’s first time altering a body of water’s name. Shortly after returning to office in 2025, he renamed the Gulf of Mexico as “Gulf of America.” Some companies like Google and Apple updated their maps accordingly; however, most organizations outside of the U. S still refer to it as Gulf of Mexico.
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