Order parallels Trump’s 2025 Gulf of Mexico renaming
WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump signed an executive order Thursday renaming Lake Ontario as “Lake America” in the U.S. geographic naming service. The order applies only to U.S. federal nomenclature and cannot compel Canada, a U.S. ally with a long trading relationship, to adopt the change for the lake it shares with the United States.
The executive order comes amid a trade dispute between the two countries. The U.S. imposed 50% tariffs on $20 billion worth of Canadian goods over the weekend after bilateral trade talks collapsed. According to the AP, Trump had publicly floated the renaming earlier in the week, before the negotiations broke down.
The Lake Ontario order mirrors Trump’s 2025 executive order that renamed the Gulf of Mexico as the “Gulf of America” in federal usage.
Trump’s Thursday order formalizes the renaming he had publicly floated earlier in the same week, as MSI previously reported.