Trump Signs Order to Rename Lake Ontario to Lake America
To play this video you need to enable JavaScript in your browser.
By Jessica Murphy, Canada digital editor
Published 27 August 2026, 19:07 BST
Updated 1 hour ago
US President Donald Trump has signed an executive order seeking to rename Lake Ontario to Lake America.
The move comes in the wake of collapsed trade talks between the US and Canada, and the US’ imposition of new 50% tariffs on $20bn (C$28bn) worth of Canadian goods. Canada will implement "dollar for dollar" counter tariffs next month.
Trump has previously threatened to rename the lake on social media amid the trade dispute. He declared the change "official, effective immediately" on Thursday, stating his administration had filed all necessary documents.
When Trump assumed the White House in 2025, he signed a similar order changing the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America. However, Mexico rejected the name change, arguing a single country cannot rename a shared body of international water. This led to a dispute between Mexico and tech giant Google, which renamed the gulf in its maps application.
Trump’s latest order directs the US Department of the Interior to update the Geographic Names Information Service, the official repository of domestic geographic names in the US, to reflect the change.
Canada, however, does not recognise name changes imposed by other countries, and officials dismissed the idea earlier this week.
"We’ll always call it Lake Ontario," said Industry Minister Melanie Joly on Tuesday.
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. Lake Ontario, the smallest of the Great Lakes, borders both the Canadian province of Ontario and the US state of New York.
[Image source: Reuters]
Canada’s retaliation tests the limit of American power under Trump
Published 1 day ago
‘Half my business will be gone’ – firms in Canada and US fear trade war
Published 3 days ago
As he signed the order in the Oval Office on Thursday, Trump stated it was not a direct message to Canada but that the country "has been ripping us off for a long time on trade."
Trump added that he had been considering renaming the lake for a long time. "So if you think about it, we have a gulf and we have a lake. Now, all we need is an ocean. So maybe we’ll have to change the name of the Atlantic or the Pacific. Maybe we’ll change them both."
The name change request comes amid a trade dispute that has pushed US-Canada relations to new lows, with insults exchanged between the Trump administration and Canadian officials over the past week. However, there was a glimmer of potential for future negotiations on Thursday.
Canadian US trade minister, Dominic LeBlanc, noted on X that the US had withdrawn some of its demands regarding labelling requirements in French and confirmed that measures to promote French language and Canadian culture would not be subject to future US trade actions.
"We look forward to further constructive US clarifications on their other positions," LeBlanc added.
