Trump Floats Renaming Lake Ontario as Lake America

Trump raised the idea Tuesday on social media, linking the proposed name change to the deteriorating U.S.-Canada trade relationship. He said the United States did not expect to conduct as much business with Ontario, Canada’s most populous province, following the collapse of recent trade negotiations. The proposal came as Washington and Ottawa imposed new tariffs on each other’s goods, further escalating economic tensions between the longtime trading partners.

Lake Ontario is one of North America’s five Great Lakes and sits along the border between Ontario and New York state. The waterway is jointly managed by the United States and Canada through bilateral agreements and institutions, meaning a U.S. decision to use a different name would not require Canada or international bodies to adopt it. Trump similarly used an executive order last year to direct U.S. federal agencies to refer to the Gulf of Mexico as the Gulf of America, although the original name remains widely used outside the United States.