Donald Trump reiterated his threat to rename Lake Ontario as "America Lake" this Wednesday, warning that he was not "joking," amid the worst trade crisis between the United States and Canada in decades.
The president introduced the idea on Tuesday via Truth Social, as reported by the AP, accompanied by an image where the original name was crossed out and replaced with golden letters. His justification was brief: "The United States does not expect to do much business with Ontario in the future."
Trump insists: "Maybe I wasn't joking."
During an interview on Glenn Beck's radio program, the 80-year-old leader compared the initiative to the renaming of the Gulf of Mexico: "People thought I was joking. Maybe I wasn't, because the last one they saw was the Gulf of Mexico; now it's the Gulf of America. So now we have a Gulf and a lake."
In the same conversation, he dismissed the idea that the trade war harms the U.S.: "They don't have anything we need. It's time to teach Canada that they can't keep doing this."
The proposal comes after the collapse of bilateral negotiations on August 22, when Washington imposed a 50% tariff on Canadian imports valued at approximately 20 billion dollars. Canada responded with equivalent retaliatory measures on American products, effective September 8, and a support package of 7.5 billion Canadian dollars for affected workers.
The Canadian response: from rejection to direct insult
The Minister of Industry of Canada, Mélanie Joly, was firm: "We will always call it Lake Ontario. Period."
More emphatic was the Premier of Ontario, Doug Ford, who recently referred to Trump as a “dictator,” “bully,” and “the king of bankruptcies”. In response to the name change proposal, Ford dismissed it as “much rhetoric” and asserted that Ontario would not “back down.”
On the American side, the mayor of Rochester —the largest city in the U.S. by the lake—, Malik Evans, outright rejected the idea: "I haven't given any thought to the president's latest publicity stunt. It's another attempt to distract the public from critical issues that cause real harm to low- and middle-income consumers."
An indigenous name that has preceded the province for centuries
The proposal is also based on a historically incorrect premise: Trump suggested that the name of the lake is derived from the Canadian province, when in fact, it is exactly the opposite.
Daniel Macfarlane, a professor at Western Michigan University and a researcher on the border waters between both countries, explained it in statements to WXXI News: "Ontario is an Indigenous name. It is an anglicization of an Iroquois word that means something like big lake, or shining and radiant lake."
The lake was named that centuries before the province existed.
Macfarlane reacted with disbelief: "I laughed out loud and covered my face with my hand... because it's just ridiculous." He added that "the Canadian side of Lake Ontario far outweighs the New York side in terms of population. The lake is much more important to Canada than it is to the United States."
From a legal standpoint, Trump could instruct federal agencies to use the new name —as he did with the Gulf of Mexico in January 2025— but he does not have the authority to impose that change on Canada or the international bodies that oversee the lake.
The real cost: Canadian tourism in free fall
Beyond symbolism, the trade war has already had tangible consequences. Researchers from the University of Toronto estimated that Canadian visits to U.S. metropolitan areas dropped by 42% since Trump took office.
In Florida, Canadian tourism decreased by nearly 14% in the first half of 2026, and in New York, it dropped by 26% in 2025.
"Our tourism economy cannot afford another year of trade wars with Canada that push away our most important international visitors," warned Vijay Dandapani, president of the New York Hotel Association, emphasizing that Canada is the city's primary tourism partner.
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