U.S. President Donald Trump has signed an order to rename Lake Ontario to “Lake America.”
At a conference held at the White House, Trump said this would take effect “immediately.” This comes after he said on Tuesday that he was giving “serious consideration” to the name change because “we don’t expect to be doing much business with Ontario any longer.” Naturally, he’s referring to the trade war that he started with Canada after making unreasonable demands that Prime Minister Mark Carney said “asked too much and offered too little.”
Holy shit — the purpose of this Trump event is to announce that he’s changing the name of Lake Ontario to “Lake America.” It will be interesting to see which if any institutions and companies go along with this
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar.com) August 27, 2026 at 1:42 PM
Of course, Trump doesn’t have any real jurisdiction to rename Lake Ontario, the namesake of which came from First Nations peoples. “You cannot rename away our history,” said the Mississaugas of the Credit First Nation in a statement response to Trump’s latest announcement.
Indeed, while Trump is certainly free to sign an executive order in the U.S. requiring it to be called “Lake America” there, he has no authority to get anywhere else in the world, including Canada, to abide by that.
With that said, it remains to be seen how tech companies will respond. We saw in January when the ever-immature Trump ordered the Gulf of Mexico to be renamed the “Gulf of America” that platforms like Google Maps spinelessly abided by this. Even in other countries like Canada where Trump’s order wasn’t binding, Google Maps has still been showing “Gulf of Mexico (Gulf of America).” Presumably, something similar will happen with Lake Ontario.
All of this comes amid a heated trade war between Canada and the U.S. Talks fell through for a new free trade deal after the U.S. made many demands, including for Canada to lift requirements on CanCon discoverability and bilingual labelling. The U.S. has since withdrawn those particular orders, even though Trump claimed he never made them in the first place.
In general, Trump has claimed that Canada has been taking advantage of the U.S. in free trade, even though he himself signed the previous CUSMA deal and the two nations have famously benefited from a close partnership. But naturally, Trump’s fragile ego has now destroyed many decades of kinship between Canada and the U.S. as he hits Canada with billions in tariffs and plans to enact many more on the automotive industry next year. Canada, meanwhile, is set to introduce its own retaliatory tariffs next month.
All the while, Trump has been throwing insults at Carney, calling him “a weak and ineffective Prime Minister.” The president also blasted Ontario Premier Doug Ford, saying he’s “the less charismatic, intelligent, and overall unimpressive brother of the late, great, Rob Ford.” While Carney has naturally avoided that kind of name-calling, Ford referred to Trump as a “loser” and the “king of bankruptcies” while telling him to “kiss my ass.”
Image credit: Shutterstock
