The president Donald Trump signed an executive order on Thursday to rename Lake Ontario as "America Lake," marking the latest escalation in his trade war with Canada.
Trump affixed his signature in the Oval Office surrounded by maps of the Great Lakes. He expressed that he has been considering the new name for some time and declared the change "official, effective immediately."
"Let's change the name of Lake Ontario, effective immediately, to Lake America. That is going to happen right now as I sign the order," said Trump, according to a video shared on his account on Truth Social.
The president went further and opened the door to renaming oceans. "We have a gulf and we have a lake. Now, we just need an ocean. So, maybe we need to change the name of the Atlantic and/or the Pacific. Perhaps we will change the names of both," he noted, without announcing any formal action in that regard.
The text of the executive order justifies the change with economic and strategic arguments: it states that the deepest parts of the lake are located in U.S. territory, that the United States provides nine of the 11 icebreakers operating in the Great Lakes, and that Washington has invested nearly $4 billion in the past decade to protect this freshwater ecosystem, compared to a "much smaller" Canadian contribution.
A White House advisor present at the signing was explicit: "This is a lake that has most of its volume in the United States. The deepest parts are located in U.S. territory, so this will reflect that it is an American lake."
The decree mandates the Secretary of the Interior to act in coordination with the Board of Geographic Names within 30 days to update the Geographic Names Information System and eliminate any federal reference to the original name.
The measure, however, has exclusively federal reach: it mandates U.S. government agencies, but it has no legal power over Canada, the states, private companies, or international organizations.
When asked about his insistence on provoking U.S. allies, he did not hold back: "Canadian officials have treated us very poorly. They are unpleasant people." He stated that they are "the worst to deal with in terms of trade" and labeled them as "arrogant."
The Canadian response was immediate and forceful. The Minister of Industry, Mélanie Joly, was emphatic: "We will always call it Lake Ontario. Period." The Premier of Ontario, Doug Ford—who had referred to Trump as a "dictator" and a "bully" just days earlier—described the proposal as "a lot of rhetoric" and asserted that his province would not "back down."
Experts also questioned the historical premise of the decree. Researcher Daniel Macfarlane from Western Michigan University pointed out that the name “Ontario” does not derive from the Canadian province, but rather from the Iroquois word “oniatarí:io,” meaning “lake of shining waters” or “great lake,” which predates the existence of that province by centuries. “I laughed out loud and covered my face with my hand... because it’s just ridiculous,” he stated.
The renaming follows the precedent of the threat issued by Trump just two days earlier on Truth Social.
It also replicates the logic of Executive Order 14172 from January 20, 2025, which renamed the Gulf of Mexico as the "Gulf of America." The measure that led to Google, Apple, and Microsoft adapting their maps.
The backdrop is a trade war that escalated following the failure of bilateral negotiations on August 22, which left a 50% tariff on Canadian imports valued at approximately $20 billion in effect.
Canada responded with equivalent reprisals on American products, effective September 8, along with a support package of 7.5 billion Canadian dollars for affected workers.
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