Trump Takes Canada Feud to New Level With Bonkers Power Grab

Photo Illustration by Thomas Levinson/The Daily Beast/Getty Donald Trump has ramped up his war with Canada by renaming one of its major lakes while suggesting he’d like to seize an ocean next.

As the tit-for-tat over tariffs continues, Trump signed an executive order on Thursday renaming Lake Ontario as “Lake America”—“effective immediately.” “We have a gulf, and we have a lake, now all we need is an ocean,” mused the 80-year-old president.

“So maybe we’ll have to change the name of the Atlantic, and/or the Pacific.” The executive order comes despite the fact that the U.S. can’t force Canada to adopt the name change.

He made a similar power grab last year, when he renamed the Gulf of Mexico the Gulf of America.

But the taunt was nonetheless the latest escalation of tensions with Canada and its leader Mark Carney after trade negotiations spectacularly collapsed.

This led Trump to impose 50 percent tariffs on Canadian goods, and Canada to respond with tariffs on more than 700 American products.

Lake Ontario, one of the five Great Lakes, spans the U.S.-Canada border, with its northern side in Ontario and the southern portion in New York.

But in response to the president’s latest attack, Democratic congresswoman Debbie Dingle suggested a novel way to ensure Trump would take care of Lake Ontario: name it after Natalie Harp, Trump’s ever-present White House aide.

“Let’s just call it Lake Natalie so we know you’ll start protecting our Great Lakes,” she wrote on X in response to news earlier this week that Trump was considering claiming Lake Ontario.

Some Canadians have also suggested they should change the name of Lake Michigan, another one of the five Great Lakes, to “Lake Epstein”—a reference to sex offender and former Trump associate Jeffrey Epstein.

The president made good on his threat on Thursday by signing the order, which directs Secretary of the Interior Doug Burgum and his department to update the Geographic Names Information System to reflect the shift.

Asked what message he was trying to send with the move, Trump initially claimed, “no message” before adding: “Canada has been ripping us off for a long time on trade.” However, the issue comes with political risks for Republicans ahead of November’s midterm elections, because states that border Canada, such as New York, Michigan and Maine, have deeply integrated economies, particularly in manufacturing, agriculture and energy.

GOP Senator Susan Collins of Maine urged the White House on Thursday to return to the negotiating table, particularly given “our Canadian friends” removed seafood and fish products from its retaliatory tariff list.

“These tariffs would have caused tremendous harm to Maine’s lobstermen, disrupting one of their most important markets during the fall fishing season,” she said.