Trump signs executive order renaming Lake Ontario as ‘Lake America’

Trump signs executive order renaming Lake Ontario as 'Lake America'

The name change is Trump's latest attack on Canada as the two countries engage in a rapidly spiraling trade war.

By Ashley Ahn

08/27/2026 02:33 PM EDT | Updated: 08/27/2026 04:36 PM EDT

President Donald Trump signed an executive order Thursday renaming Lake Ontario as "Lake America" amid an intensifying trade war with Canada.

"Canada has been ripping us off for a long time on trade, very sadly, even the military," Trump said in the Oval Office. "We defend Canada for nothing."

The text of the executive order directs Interior Secretary Doug Burgum and the U.S. Board on Geographic Names to ensure all federal agencies and the Geographic Names Information System, which records official names of U.S. geographic features, refer to the lake using its new name.

The announcement came two days after the president threatened to change the name of the 13th-largest lake in the world, which borders New York and the Canadian province of Ontario. (The province is named after the lake.)

The executive order states that the United States claims most of the lake's volume, "with the deepest parts of the Lake's waters lying within United States territory."

Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney said on X that Canadians will never stop calling the body of water Lake Ontario, whose name predates the United States and Canada and originates from the Wendat word "Ontari'io," meaning beautiful, big lake.

"We know that America is changing. Their trading relationships, their foreign policies, their national monuments, their hydronyms," he said. "Canadians also know that naming reality means calling it Lake Ontario – then, now and always."

And in a social media post responding to the White House, Gov. Kathy Hochul of New York — the only state bordering the lake — said "New York won't be calling it that."

Her statement comes one day after she decried Trump's threats to rename the lake as "absurd" at the New York State Fair, where she spoke with farmers affected by the tariff war with Canada.

Hochul said the Trump administration "should be focusing on ways to mend relationships with Canada so our farmers and our consumers and our families do not continue suffering from this inane war over tariffs."

Stashing Lake Ontario's name is Trump's latest attack on Canada as the two countries exchange verbal punches and threats over tariffs.

"The Canadian officials have treated us very badly," Trump said, calling them "nasty people."

The two countries are in a rapidly spiraling trade war, after talks for a deal broke down over the weekend. Trump has spent the week belittling Canada, calling the country's leaders "easily the most difficult and unreasonable."

Since the beginning of his second term, Trump has needled Canada, saying it did not need independence and should become America's "51st state." His relationship with Carney has deteriorated, with Carney seeking closer ties to Europe and calling for countries to adapt to a new global order that is not built on the assumption that America is a reliable ally.

The lake's name change is the latest in Trump's efforts to alter the names of global landmarks across the country, changing the Gulf of Mexico to the "Gulf of America" and Alaska's Denali — the highest mountain peak in North America — to Mount McKinley at the beginning of his second term.

While Trump's name change dictates government policy, it cannot immediately compel cultural or international change. The Associated Press, for example, said it would use Mount McKinley in its widely used style guide — but not "Gulf of America" because of its international nature.

In a video posted on Truth Social Thursday, the president crossed out Lake Ontario on a map with a black marker and wrote "Lake America" in all caps.

"We have a gulf and a lake," Trump said in the Oval Office after signing the executive order. "Now all we need is an ocean."