Trump signs executive order to rename Lake Ontario as ‘Lake America’
President Donald Trump on Thursday signed an executive order to rename Lake Ontario “Lake America.”
The move comes amid the president’s repeated threats and taunts that he would do so amid his escalating trade war with Canada.
“This is official effective immediately,” Trump said after signing the order in the Oval Office.
The president said he’d “filed all the necessary papers, documents, everything else” for the name change. “We notified all of the various people that we have to notify. So we’ve done everything that you have to do, and this is official, effective immediately.”
Lake Ontario has been called Lake Ontario since at least the 1600s.
Trump made a similar move last year to rename the Gulf of Mexico the Gulf of America. The Interior Department and Google Maps complied with that directive, while the rest of the world largely has not.
Canadian maritime attorney Marc Isaacs told NBC News this week that a U.S. move on a name change of Lake Ontario wouldn’t impact other countries, including Canada, saying that no officials in either country own the naming rights to the lake.
“The Americans can call it whatever they want to call it,” Isaacs said. “It is Lake Ontario.”
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