Trump says U.S. could rename Lake Ontario as Lake America amid Canada trade war

The president cited his tariff fight in a social media post, saying the United States doesn’t expect to be “doing much business with Ontario any longer.”

August 25, 2026 WPost

By Sammy Westfall

President Donald Trump said he is considering changing the name of Lake Ontario, the easternmost of the Great Lakes spanning the U.S.-Canada border, to Lake America, as the U.S.-Canada trade fight escalates.

“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 on Truth Social on Tuesday morning.

Over the weekend, Canada and the United States were thrown into a heated trade war after Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney walked away from negotiations over tariffs — a rare example of a foreign leader telling Trump “enough.”

In targeting Lake Ontario, which borders Toronto on its northern shore, Trump is continuing a pattern of trying to rename major geographical features: In a 2025 executive order, he said he would rename the Gulf of Mexico as the Gulf of America and Denali as Mount McKinley.