Donald Trump signed an executive order overnight to change the name of Lake Ontario to “Lake America,” a further escalation of the US’s trade dispute with Canada.

The executive order directs Interior Secretary Doug Burgum to update the Geographic Names Information System to reflect the name change, effective immediately. While the new name is expected to be included in official US government documents and communications, it likely won’t be recognised by Canada.

“Canada has been ripping us off for a long time on trade, very sadly,” Trump said in the Oval Office.

The US and Canada are bracing for a prolonged trade dispute after last-minute talks to strike a trade deal broke down over the weekend. The Trump administration on Saturday imposed 50 per cent tariffs on $27.8 billion of Canadian goods, and Prime Minister Mark Carney retaliated with tariffs on US goods. Trump has also threatened to impose 50 per cent tariffs on automobiles and parts from Canada starting in January.

The president hinted at the executive order earlier this week, when he wrote on Truth Social that the US was “giving serious consideration” to the name change.

Lake Ontario, one of the Great Lakes, spans the US-Canada border. The northern portion of the lake is in Ontario and the southern portion is in New York. Mélanie Joly, Canada’s minister of industry, on Tuesday said that Canadians will “always call it Lake Ontario.”

Last year, Trump signed an executive order declaring that The Gulf of Mexico — which is bounded by the US, Mexico and Cuba — would be renamed The Gulf of America. The name change, which applied to federal publications and communications, generally isn’t recognised by other countries, including Mexico.

Trump said on Thursday that he had been thinking about changing the name of the lake “for a long time.”

“We took something called The Gulf of Mexico, we changed it,” he said. “So if you think about it, we have a gulf and we have a lake, now all we need is an ocean.”

Canadian officials didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment on the order.

Wall Street Journal

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