U.S. President Donald Trump renamed Lake Ontario “Lake America” on Thursday, escalating a feud with Canada that has already spawned tariffs on tens of billions of dollars in cross-border trade.
The change would take effect immediately, said Trump, who also ordered the Gulf of Mexico renamed as the Gulf of America after assuming office last year.
“We’re going to be changing the name of Lake Ontario effective immediately to Lake America,” Trump told reporters in the Oval Office.
“The lake change, the Lake of America, was something I’ve been thinking about for a long time, actually,” Trump said.
Trade talks between the U.S. and Canada collapsed last week with each side blaming the other for derailing three days of intensive negotiations.
One of the five Great Lakes of North America, Lake Ontario borders both the Canadian province of Ontario and the U.S. state of New York.
Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
After Trump ordered the Gulf of Mexico renamed in January 2025, it took about two weeks for the U.S. Board on Geographic Names, as part of the Department of the Interior, to update the official federal nomenclature in the Geographic Names Information System to reflect the changes, effective immediately for federal use.
A Reuters/Ipsos poll in May showed 72% of Americans had a favorable view of Canada ― a higher share than any other country in the survey had, including Germany and Mexico ― and about twice Trump’s own approval rating.
About 52% of the surface area of Lake Ontario is in Canada, with the remainder in New York under a 1909 treaty.
(Reporting by Costas Pitas and Ryan Patrick Jones; Editing by Katharine Jackson, Scott Malone and Deepa Babington)