President Donald Trump says the United States is giving “serious consideration” to renaming one of the Great Lakes as relations with Canada’s most populated province sour.
Trump posted on Truth Social Tuesday morning that he’s thinking of changing the name of Lake Ontario to “Lake America.”
“The United States is giving serious consideration to changing the name of Lake Ontario to Lake America in that we don’t expect to doing much business with Ontario any longer,” he wrote.
The change would be similar to the Republican president’s executive order last year to rename the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America.
The Great Lakes — Huron, Ontario, Michigan, Erie and Superior — are a chain of five freshwater lakes that hold roughly one-fifth of the world’s surface fresh water. Lake Ontario, which the province is named after, shares a border with the U.S. states of New York and Pennsylvania.
Michigan is the only Great Lake that doesn’t border Canada.
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The United States and Canada are locked in a trade dispute after Prime Minister Mark Carney suspended trade talks last Friday, accusing the U.S. of trying to introduce last-minute demands that would limit Canada’s ability to make trade deals with other countries and protect its culture and sovereignty.
The U.S. introduced a new round of 50 per cent tariffs on Canadian exports on Saturday, targeting goods worth $28 billion. Canada is expected to announce retaliatory measures Tuesday that will go into effect Sept. 8.
Ontario Premier Doug Ford, whose province is home to the country’s auto industry, said Monday that he backs Carney. He also took aim at Trump after the president posted about him on social media.
“I don’t respond to a dictator like President Trump, a bully like President Trump. I’m not going to take any advice off a guy that’s the king of bankruptcies,” Ford said during a news conference, which also heard him say Trump could “kiss my ass.”
“Let’s be clear, I don’t like the guy — simple.”
Carney said Monday that Canada will go back to the negotiating table on a trade deal once the United States changes its attitude and stops treating Canada as a subsidiary.
— with files from Isaac Callan and The Associated Press
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