WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump said Thursday he is renaming Lake Ontario to be known as “Lake America” in the United States as he exacerbates his trade war with Canada.
The Republican president signed an executive order that updated the lake’s name for the U.S. geographic naming service. Trump cannot force Canada to follow his preferred naming convention, however.
The move is reminiscent of his move last year to rename the Gulf of Mexico as the “Gulf of America.'”
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.”
He told reporters that Canada is “the worst” to deal with on trade. “They feel entitled and we can’t have that,” he said.
The president has been floating the idea of the name change in recent days as the U.S. announced it was imposing 50% tariffs on $20 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 U.S. once had warm relations should instead be absorbed as the 51st state.
The U.S. and Canada share borders along multiple Great Lakes, including Lake Ontario.
The official U.S.-Canada border stretches across the water between Lake Ontario’s northern and southern shores. The body of water forms much of New York State’s coastline and separates Buffalo from Toronto, the capital of the province of Ontario. Toronto is Canada’s most populous city and Ontario its most populous province.
Ontario is also the single largest export destination for more than a dozen U.S. states.
The lake’s name comes from the Huron Indigenous people’s word “oniatarí:io,” which means “lake of shining waters,” and it predates European settlement in the region. The province, founded in 1867, took its name from the lake.
The International Hydrographic Organization — of which both the United States and Canada are members — works to ensure that the world’s seas, oceans and navigable waters are surveyed and charted uniformly, and also names some of them. But there is no single international body that determines names of international bodies of water.
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