Canadian PM defies US after Trump signs order renaming Lake Ontario as ‘Lake America’

President Donald Trump said Thursday he is renaming Lake Ontario to be known as “Lake America” in the United States as he escalates his trade war with Canada.

The president signed an executive order directing the Interior Department to update the lake’s name in the US geographic naming service. Trump cannot force Canada to follow his preferred naming convention, however.

Trump has been floating the idea of the name change in recent days as the US announced it was imposing 50 per cent tariffs on $US20 billion worth of Canadian goods over the weekend after talks between the countries broke down.

Trump has been needling America’s northern neighbor since he returned to the White House last year, suggesting the ally with whom the US once had warm relations should instead be absorbed as the 51st state.

Canada responded to Trump’s import taxes this week by imposing retaliatory tariffs on $US20 billion worth of American goods, including steel, dairy products, appliances and farm equipment.

Trump, who signed the order as he was sitting at the Resolute Desk in the Oval Office, had a large sign behind him propped on a stand with a map of the Great Lakes. Over Lake Ontario, in big red letters, the map read “Lake America.”

On the other side of the president was another map with the words, “MAKING THE GREAT LAKES EVEN GREATER.”

Trump said as he was signing the order that he’d “notified all of the various people that we have to notify. So, we’ve done everything that you have to do.”

But the executive order Trump signed shows that the changes are supposed to be made within 30 days.

Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney rejected the move, invoking the lake’s Indigenous roots and noting that the name predates both Canadian Confederation and the US Declaration of Independence.

“Canadians also know that naming reality means calling it Lake Ontario — then, now and always,” he wrote.

Ontario Premier Doug Ford, who has traded insults with Trump, said on X: “It’s Lake Ontario to Canadians and the rest of the world. Now and forever.”

Nova Scotia Premier Tim Houston said, “We’re into some real foolishness now. It’s Lake Ontario, buddy.”

The lake is one of multiple Great Lakes that the US and Canada share borders along. New York Gov. Kathy Hochul, a Democrat whose state shares a border on the lake, wrote on X in response to the White House’s announcement that, “New York won’t be calling it that.”