Lake Ontario borders both the Canadian province of Ontario and the US state of New York.
Published August 25, 2026
As the trade war between the United States and Canada intensifies, US President Donald Trump says he is considering renaming Lake Ontario to Lakes of the Americas.
“The United States can no longer expect to do much business with Lake Ontario, so we are seriously considering renaming Lake Ontario to Lake America,” President Trump said in a post on his platform Truth Social on Tuesday.
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The move would be similar to President Trump’s effort last year to rename the Gulf of Mexico the Gulf of America through an executive order.
Asked about President Trump’s comments, Canada’s U.S. trade minister, Dominic LeBlanc, said Canada does not respond to social media posts by the U.S. government.
“As a federal government, we decided several months ago that we would not respond to routine social media posts by the president and members of his Cabinet,” LeBlanc said in an interview with CNBC.
The United States and Canada are embroiled in a trade dispute, with Canada expected to announce retaliatory measures on Tuesday. The move comes in response to the Trump administration’s over the weekend imposition of 50% tariffs on $20 billion worth of Canadian goods after trade talks between the two countries broke down.The new tariffs affect products such as wine, furniture, dairy products, cement, clothing, fishing rods and hockey equipment, or 5.5% of Canada’s exports to the United States.
Lake Ontario, one of North America’s Great Lakes, borders both the Canadian province of Ontario and the US state of New York. Ontario is Canada’s most populous province and home to the country’s automotive industry.
Rhetoric between the two countries has further escalated, with President Trump telling Canadian leaders on Monday to “keep in line” or face consequences “much worse” than existing tariffs. Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney accused the United States of trying to subjugate his country.
President Trump also threatened to impose new 50 per cent tariffs on Canadian cars, auto parts and steel, but Carney said the US trade demands showed the US wanted to “destroy our major industries” such as cars, steel and aluminum.
Canada and the United States share the world’s largest trading relationship with deeply integrated supply chains across autos, energy, agriculture and manufacturing, making a prolonged trade war potentially costly for businesses and workers on both sides of the border.
