18 minutes agoShareSaveAdd as preferred on GoogleJessica MurphyCanada digital editor
ReutersUS President Donald Trump has signed an executive order seeking to rename Lake Ontario to Lake America.
The move comes after trade talks between the US and Canada collapsed late last week, and the US imposed new 50% tariffs on $20bn (C$28bn) worth of Canadian goods. Canada will implement “dollar for dollar” counter tariffs next month.
Trump has repeatedly posted threats about renaming the lake, one of the five Great Lakes between the two countries, on social media amid the trade dispute.
He said on Thursday the move was “official, effective immediately” and that his administration has “filed all the necessary papers, documents” to make the change.
When Trump took the White House in 2025, he signed a similar order that changed the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America. Mexico has rejected the name change, arguing a single country cannot rename a shared body of international water.
Trump’s latest order directs the US Department of the interior to update the Geographic Names Information Service to reflect the name change, the president said.
Canadian officials dismissed the idea of the name change in remarks earlier this week, with Industry Minister Melanie Joly saying: “We’ll always call it Lake Ontario.”
As he signed the order on Thursday in the Oval Office, Trump said it wasn’t a direct message to Canada, but that America’s northern neighbour “has been ripping us off for a long time on trade”.
He said he’d been thinking about renaming the lake “for a long time”.
“So if you think about it, we have a gulf and we have a lake,” Trump said.
“Now, all we need is an ocean. So maybe we’ll have to change the name of the Atlantic and or the Pacific. Maybe we’ll change them both.”
The names of four of the Great Lakes – Ontario, Huron, Michigan and Erie – originate from indigenous words. Lake Superior was named after an anglicised French word.
CanadaDonald TrumpUnited StatesTrump tariffs
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