{"id":606795,"date":"2026-08-28T02:14:12","date_gmt":"2026-08-28T02:14:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/606795\/"},"modified":"2026-08-28T02:14:12","modified_gmt":"2026-08-28T02:14:12","slug":"trump-signs-order-renaming-lake-ontario-as-lake-america-in-us","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/606795\/","title":{"rendered":"Trump signs order renaming Lake Ontario as \u2018Lake America\u2019 in US"},"content":{"rendered":"

President Donald Trump has said he is renaming Lake Ontario to be known as \u201cLake America\u201d in the United States as he escalates his trade war with Canada.<\/p>\n

The Republican president signed an executive order directing the Interior Department to update the lake\u2019s name in the US geographic naming service.<\/p>\n

Mr Trump cannot force Canada to follow his preferred naming convention, however.<\/p>\n

\"USDonald Trump signed an executive order in the Oval Office of the White House (Manuel Balce Ceneta\/AP)\n<\/p>\n

He has been floating the idea of the name change in recent days as the US announced it was imposing 50% tariffs on 20 billion dollars worth of Canadian goods over the weekend after talks between the countries broke down.<\/p>\n

The president has been needling America\u2019s northern neighbour since he returned to the White House last year, suggesting the ally with whom the US once had warm relations should instead be absorbed as the 51st state.<\/p>\n

Canada responded to Mr Trump\u2019s import taxes this week by imposing retaliatory tariffs on 20 billion dollars worth of American goods, including steel, dairy products, appliances and farm equipment.<\/p>\n

Mr Trump, who signed the order as he was sitting at the Resolute Desk in the Oval Office, had a large sign behind him propped on a stand with a map of the Great Lakes.<\/p>\n

Over Lake Ontario, in big red letters, the map read \u201cLake America\u201d.<\/p>\n

On the other side of the president was another map with the words, \u201cMaking The Great Lakes Even Greater.\u201d<\/p>\n

The lake is one of multiple Great Lakes that the US and Canada share borders along.<\/p>\n

\"PeopleThe US and Canada share borders along multiple Great Lakes, including Lake Ontario (Keito Newman\/The Canadian Press via AP)\n<\/p>\n

Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney rejected the move, invoking the lake\u2019s indigenous roots and noting that the name predates both Canadian Confederation and the US Declaration of Independence.<\/p>\n

\u201cCanadians also know that naming reality means calling it Lake Ontario \u2013 then, now and always,\u201d he wrote.<\/p>\n

Nova Scotia premier Tim Houston dismissed Mr Trump\u2019s move in a social media post, writing: \u201cWe\u2019re into some real foolishness now. It\u2019s Lake Ontario, buddy.\u201d<\/p>\n

New York governor Kathy Hochul, a Democrat whose state shares a border on the lake, wrote on X in response to the White House\u2019s announcement: \u201cNew York won\u2019t be calling it that.\u201d<\/p>\n

There is no single international body that determines names of international bodies of water and Mr Trump has wide latitude over how the US government recognises geographic places and landmarks.<\/p>\n

Ontario premier Doug Ford, who has traded insults with Mr Trump, this week brushed aside the prospect of the US president changing the lake\u2019s name as \u201ca lot of rhetoric\u201d.<\/p>\n

The name Lake Ontario comes from the Huron Indigenous people\u2019s word \u201coniatari:io,\u201d which means \u201clake of shining waters\u201d.<\/p>\n

The province of Ontario, founded in 1867, took its name from the lake.<\/p>\n

\"PresidentPresident Donald Trump signs an executive order in the Oval Office of the White House in Washington (Manuel Balce Ceneta\/AP)\n<\/p>\n

Mr Trump said that while his action was not meant to send any particular geopolitical message, \u201cCanada\u2019s been ripping us off for a long time\u201d on trade and military issues.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey wanted to be treated like a state and they\u2019re not a state,\u201d the president said.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe just can\u2019t do that anymore.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWe love the people of Canada,\u201d Mr Trump added.<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t think their representatives do, an appropriate job. Maybe they\u2019ll change. I really don\u2019t know. It doesn\u2019t make much difference.\u201d<\/p>\n

The move is reminiscent of his move last year to rename the Gulf of Mexico as the \u201cGulf of America\u201d.<\/p>\n

Mr Trump scribbled his name with a Sharpie pen on the executive order, then held it up for the cameras, saying: \u201cAnd we filed all the necessary papers, documents, everything else.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019ve notified all of the various people that we have to notify. So, we\u2019ve done everything that you have to do,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\"AThe Detroit skyline as seen from Ontario (Mike Householder\/AP)\n<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd this is official, effective immediately.\u201d<\/p>\n

The executive order Mr Trump signed shows that the changes are, in fact, supposed to be made within 30 days.<\/p>\n

He also suggested his push to rename bodies of water may not be finished.<\/p>\n

\u201cSo, if you think about it, we have a gulf and we have a lake. Now, all we need is an ocean,\u201d Mr Trump said.<\/p>\n

\u201cSo maybe we\u2019ll have to change the name of the Atlantic and\/or the Pacific. Maybe we\u2019ll change them.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"President Donald Trump has said he is renaming Lake Ontario to be known as \u201cLake America\u201d in the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":606796,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[42,43,40,38,41,39],"class_list":["post-606795","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/606795","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=606795"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/606795\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/606796"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=606795"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=606795"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=606795"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}