U.S. President Donald Trump on the 27th (local time) signed an executive order to change the name of Lake Ontario, located on the U.S.-Canada border, to Lake America. After declaring a full-scale trade war against Canada, once considered the closest ally, he unilaterally changed a border place name as well, which observers said further ratcheted up the provocation.
On the day, President Trump directed Interior Secretary Doug Burgum to immediately change the name of Lake Ontario to Lake America under the federal naming system. When the president signs an executive order, the new place name is applied right away to official U.S. federal government documents and communications. The move came as trade talks between the United States and Canada collapsed and the two countries imposed a 50% tariff on $20 billion worth of each other's goods, pushing their trade friction to an extreme.
Meeting reporters in the Oval Office on the day, President Trump said, "Canada has long exploited us in trade. It is very regrettable." At the same time, he harshly criticized, saying, "Canadian officials are nasty people who treat the United States very badly." In the executive order released that day, the White House argued that because the deepest point of the lake lies within U.S. territory, the United States has rights over most of its waters. It added the reasoning that the United States plays the largest role in protecting Lake America as part of the Great Lakes and that the lake will be important to the global economy going forward. Trump added, "Changing Lake Ontario to Lake America is something I have actually thought about for a long time."
The name Lake Ontario derives from an Indigenous language meaning "lake of shining waters." The name of Ontario, the Canadian province that includes Toronto, the country's largest city, is also known to have been taken from the lake's name in 1867. Under a treaty concluded in 1909, the two countries partition the lake, but Canada occupies 52% of Lake Ontario's total surface area, a majority.
Canada on the day immediately pushed back against the United States' unilateral move and said it would never recognize the name change. Melanie Joly, Canada's Minister of Trade and Industry (MOTI), said, "We will always call it Lake Ontario." Nova Scotia Premier Tim Houston likewise criticized the Trump administration on social media, saying, "Friend, it's Lake Ontario." Ontario Premier Doug Ford, from Canada's most populous province, hurled harsh words at President Trump, calling him a "loser," and took the vanguard in resistance against the United States. In Canada, amid the Trump administration's indiscriminate tariff bombardment and forced place-name change, a wave of flags stoking patriotism and boycotts of U.S. travel and products is spreading rapidly.
This is not the first time President Trump has unilaterally changed a place name used internationally. Shortly after taking office last year, he pushed through an executive order changing the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America. At the time, when an outlet refused to use the changed name, he even barred that outlet's reporter from attending a White House event.
On the day, President Trump said, "We have a gulf and we have lakes. Now what we need is an ocean," adding, "We may have to change the name of the Atlantic or the Pacific. We probably will."