President Donald Trump signed an executive order Thursday formally renaming Lake Ontario as “Lake America,” following through on an idea he first publicly floated earlier this week as trade tensions between the United States and Canada intensified.
“We’re going to be changing the name of Lake Ontario effective immediately to Lake America,” Trump told reporters before signing the order in the Oval Office.
Placards depicting the Great Lakes were displayed beside the president during the signing, with Lake Ontario already labeled “Lake America.”
“We filed all of the necessary papers, documents, [and] everything else. We’ve notified all of the various people you have to notify,” Trump said.
The executive order comes just days after Trump first raised the possibility of renaming Lake Ontario, the easternmost of the five Great Lakes. The lake straddles the U.S.-Canada border, with New York to the south and the Canadian province of Ontario to the north.
Trump told reporters he had been considering the name change for “a long time.”
Ontario Premier Doug Ford responded to Trump’s initial comments earlier this week by dismissing the proposed name change as “a lot of rhetoric.”
Thursday’s executive order marks the second time Trump has sought to rename a major body of water bordering the United States and another country. Last year, Trump signed an executive order changing the U.S. name for the Gulf of Mexico to the “Gulf of America.”
The president suggested Thursday that other geographic names could eventually receive similar treatment.
“If you think about it, we have a gulf, now we have a lake, now all we need is an ocean,” Trump quipped. “Maybe we’ll have to change the name of the Atlantic and/or the Pacific. Maybe we’ll change them both.”
The Lake Ontario announcement comes amid a rapidly escalating trade dispute between Washington and Ottawa.
Trade tensions intensified over the weekend after Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney pulled Canadian negotiators from trade talks with the United States ahead of a new round of tariffs from the Trump administration.
The administration's new 50% tariffs on Canada are set to take effect Sept. 8.
Carney responded by announcing that Canada would impose retaliatory tariffs against the United States. During a press conference, the prime minister said Canada would “match Washington’s new tariffs dollar for dollar in order to protect Canadian workers, farmers, families and businesses.”
