Trump Renames Lake Ontario ‘Lake America’ Amid Canada Trade Fight

President Donald Trump on Thursday ordered the U.S. government to rename Lake Ontario as “Lake America,” extending his administration’s campaign to rename prominent geographic features into the middle of an escalating trade dispute with Canada.

Trump signed Executive Order 14420 directing the Department of the Interior and U.S. Board on Geographic Names to formally adopt “Lake America” for federal use. The order gives Interior Secretary Doug Burgum 30 days to update the Geographic Names Information System and directs federal agencies to remove references to Lake Ontario from maps, contracts and other government documents.

The change applies to the United States. Lake Ontario is an international body of water shared by New York and the Canadian province of Ontario, with much of its northern shoreline and major population centers, including Toronto, located in Canada. There is no international authority requiring Canada or other countries to adopt the U.S. designation.

The timing leaves little doubt about the broader context.

Trump first floated the name change earlier this week as relations between Washington and Ottawa deteriorated following the collapse of trade negotiations.

“The United States is giving serious consideration to changing the name of Lake Ontario to Lake America in that we don’t expect to be doing much business with Ontario any longer,” Trump wrote Tuesday.

The threat became official policy two days later.

The executive order argues that the United States deserves greater recognition for its role in maintaining the Great Lakes, pointing to U.S. spending on environmental restoration and the Coast Guard’s icebreaking fleet.

“The United States is the greatest protector of the Great Lakes,” the order states, adding that the Coast Guard supplies nine of the 11 icebreaking vessels operating on the lakes and that Washington has invested nearly $4 billion in protecting the Great Lakes ecosystem over the past decade.

The order also makes an unusual geographic argument for the change, saying that because the deepest portions of Lake Ontario lie within U.S. territory. “With the deepest parts of the Lake’s waters lying within United States territory, the United States claims most of the Lake’s volume.”

It goes on to recount the lake’s importance to U.S. shipping, military history and industrial development, citing Oswego and Sackets Harbor in New York and the lake’s role as the easternmost Great Lake connecting the broader system with the St. Lawrence Seaway.

Lake Ontario remains a critical piece of one of the world’s largest binational transportation systems. The Great Lakes-St. Lawrence Seaway connects ports in both the United States and Canada with the Atlantic Ocean and supports major movements of grain, iron ore, steel, limestone and other bulk commodities.

The renaming comes as the two countries are engaged in their sharpest trade confrontation in years.

U.S.-Canada negotiations broke down last week, after which Washington imposed tariffs as high as 50% on roughly $20 billion of Canadian goods. Canada has announced retaliatory tariffs covering a similar value of U.S. imports beginning September 8. Trump has also threatened 50% tariffs on Canadian cars, trucks and automotive parts beginning January 1.

On Wednesday, Trump escalated his rhetoric further, saying it was “time to teach Canada you can’t do this anymore.”

The Lake Ontario order follows Trump’s January 2025 executive order directing the federal government to rename the Gulf of Mexico as the “Gulf of America,” a designation subsequently adopted across U.S. federal agencies.

As with that change, however, Washington’s decision does not dictate what other governments call the geographic feature. Canada can continue using Lake Ontario, as can international organizations, foreign governments and private mapmakers.

Canadian officials had already dismissed the idea before Trump signed the order. Ontario Premier Doug Ford said this week that Trump could call the lake whatever he wanted, but Canadians would continue calling it Lake Ontario.

The White House order nevertheless makes “Lake America” the official name across the U.S. federal government — placing a new geographic dispute alongside the increasingly serious economic one unfolding across the border.

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