Trump renamed Lake Ontario as Lake of America, US changing: Carney

US President Donald Trump has signed an executive order seeking to change the name of Canada based Lake Ontario to Lake America. The move comes after trade talks between the US and Canada collapsed last week, and the US imposed new 50% tariffs on $20bn (C$28bn) worth of Canadian goods with each side ‌blaming the ⁠other for derailing three days of intensive negotiations.. Canada will implement "dollar for dollar" counter tariffs next month.  Trump has repeatedly posted threats about renaming the lake, one of the five Great Lakes that straddle both countries, on social media amid the trade dispute. He said on Thursday the move was "official, effective immediately" and that his administration has "filed all the necessary papers, documents" to make the change.

Trump announces that "effective immediately," he’s changing the name of Lake Ontario to “Lake America”

Americans failed the entire world by allowing this deranged man anywhere near the levers of power. pic.twitter.com/Cq88Dv4Mcw

— Jamison Daniel (@AntiquarianMuse) August 27, 2026

A White House aide said the order directs the Department of the Interior and Secretary Doug Burgum to make the change. One of the five Great Lakes of North America, Lake Ontario borders both the Canadian province of Ontario and the U.S. state of New York. 
In his reaction,Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney said,the name Lake Ontario can be traced back more than 400 years, adding in a social media post on Thursday that preceded the formation of the Canadian Confederation and the US Declaration of Independence. "We know that the United States is changing. Their trade relations, their foreign policy, their national monuments, their hydronyms," he wrote. "Canadian women and men also know that things must be called by their name, and this lake is called Lake Ontario – today and forever."

The name Lake Ontario comes from the Wendat word Ontari’io, which, appropriately, means “the lake is beautiful, the lake is big”.

The name is more than 400 years old, predating both the Confederation of Canada and the Declaration of Independence of the United States of America.…

— Mark Carney (@MarkJCarney) August 27, 2026

When Trump took the White House in 2025, he signed a similar order that changed the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America. Mexico has rejected the name change, arguing a single country cannot rename a shared body of international water.