Michelle Mengsu Chang/Toronto Star via Getty Images
- President Donald Trump says he’s considering renaming Lake Ontario to Lake America.
- The threat comes amid rising trade tensions between the US and Canada in recent days.
- Lake Ontario straddles the US-Canada border, with Canada’s biggest city, Toronto, on its northern shore.
What’s in a name? Quite a lot when it comes to a trade war.
President Donald Trump launched a fresh escalation in the growing trade fight between the US and Canada on Tuesday by threatening to rename one of the Great Lakes.
“The United States is giving serious consideration to changing the name of Lake Ontario to Lake America in that we don’t expect to doing much business with Ontario any longer,” Trump said in a post on Truth Social on Tuesday morning.
The lake, the smallest of the Great Lakes, straddles the US-Canada border, with Canada’s biggest city, Toronto, on its northern shore. On Tuesday, it became the newest battleground in the spat between the two nations over trade.
After Canada walked away from trade negotiations last week, the US imposed a new set of tariffs on its northern neighbor over the weekend.
The fight escalated on Monday when Trump threatened a plan to impose another batch of 50% tariffs on Canadian-made products. The new tariffs would apply to trucks, auto parts, and steel, and would start on January 1, Trump said.
“Canada has been ripping off the United States of America for years,” he wrote on Truth Social. “Canada will be treated like a State no longer!”
Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney threatened a similar retaliation, saying Canada would match the US’ tariffs “dollar-for-dollar” from September 8, with a fresh announcement scheduled for Tuesday.
From the Gulf of America to Lake America
Apple Maps
If Trump goes through with his threat to rename Lake Ontario to Lake America, it will be the second time he has attempted to change the name of a body of water.
In January 2025, on the first day of his second term, Trump signed an executive order renaming the Gulf of Mexico the Gulf of America. The change was later reflected on Google and Apple Maps in the US, while users outside the US see the area labeled as “Gulf of Mexico (Gulf of America).”
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