Trump renames Lake Ontario 'Lake America' amid intensifying US-Canada trade dispute

"The Lake of America was something I've been thinking about for a long time, actually. As you know, we took something called the Gulf of Mexico - we changed it - and now it's very routinely the Gulf of America," Trump said in the Oval Office.

The president said he has directed Interior Secretary Doug Burgum and the department to update the Geographic Names Information System to reflect the name change. 

The order called Lake Ontario a "tremendous asset" to the United States. 

"The United States is the greatest protector of the Great Lakes, including the body of water currently known as Lake Ontario," the order states. "Without the security and investment provided by the United States, this freshwater system would not be open for shipping, recreation, and responsible use to the same extent as it is today."

The order said the U.S. Coast Guard supplies nine of the 11 ice-breaking vessels on the Great Lakes, securing commercial shipping lanes free of charge. The U.S. has also invested nearly $4 billion in protecting the Great Lakes freshwater ecosystem in the last decade, while Canada "has invested far less in similar initiatives over the same period."

On X, Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney said 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," Carney wrote. "We know that America is changing. Their trading relationships, their foreign policies, their national monuments, their hydronyms. Canadians also know that naming reality means calling it Lake Ontario - then, now and always."

The move to rename the lake, which sits on the U.S.-Canada border, came amid a breakdown in trade between both nations, with Trump accusing Ottawa of unfair trade practices.

Trump floated renaming Lake Ontario, one of the Great Lakes, hours before Carney's announcement of reciprocal tariffs on U.S. imports. 

"Canada has been ripping us off for a long time on trade," Trump said Thursday. "Very sadly, even the military, you know, we defend Canada for nothing. We don't get anything. They don't pay us to defend Canada."

He said that Canada wants to "be treated like a state" and "we just can't do that anymore." Trump angered Canadian officials last year when he advocated for Canada to become the 51st U.S. state. 

Trump even jokingly floated renaming the Atlantic and Pacific oceans.

"So, if you think about it, we have a gulf and we have a lake," he said. "Now, all we need is an ocean. So maybe we'll have to change the name of the Atlantic and or the Pacific. Maybe we'll change them both."

Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney's office did not immediately respond to Fox News Digital's request for comment.