President Donald Trump said Tuesday that the United States is seriously considering renaming Lake Ontario “Lake America,” escalating his war of words with Canada as a bitter trade dispute intensifies and Ontario’s premier threatens to cut off electricity and critical minerals to the United States.
“The United States is giving serious consideration to changing the name of Lake Ontario to Lake America in that we don’t expect to [be] doing much business with Ontario any longer,” Trump declared on Truth Social Tuesday.
The proposed name change would echo an action Trump took on the first day of his return to the White House last year, when he signed an executive order changing the name of the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America. Trump repeatedly highlighted that move during the first year of his current term.
Trump’s latest suggestion, involving the Great Lake that borders New York and the Canadian province of Ontario, comes as relations between Washington and Ottawa deteriorate sharply over trade. Negotiations between the United States and Canada collapsed last week without an agreement.
Following the breakdown, Trump slapped a 50% tariff on approximately $20 billion worth of Canadian products, targeting goods that include automobiles, steel, beer, cheese, electronics and other imports.
Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney has pledged that his government will retaliate, while Ontario Premier Doug Ford, who has taken an aggressive posture throughout the trade confrontation, has warned that his province could use its economic leverage against the United States.
Ford told the Associated Press that “everything is on the table” if the dispute continues to escalate, raising the possibility that Ontario could withhold electricity and critical minerals from its southern neighbor.
“We power 1.5 million homes and businesses,” the premier said. “Everything’s on the table. I’ll do whatever it takes.”
Another dispute emerged from the failed negotiations after Carney claimed that one of the issues contributing to the last-minute collapse was a purported American demand involving Quebec and the use of English rather than French. Trump emphatically denied making any such demand on Monday.
“I would never interfere with Canadians speaking French!” Trump insisted on Truth Social. “In fact, I have never even thought of doing such a stupid thing. This lie was made up by a weak and ineffective Prime Minister in an attempt to gain political support, which he has totally lost, from the people of Quebec.
“I love French Canadians!” he wrote.
Carney had initially promised to answer Trump’s tariffs “dollar for dollar,” though he has since suggested that Ottawa may pursue a more selective retaliatory strategy rather than imposing an exact mirror of the American measures. Canada’s retaliatory tariffs are currently scheduled to take effect Sept. 8.
Trump, meanwhile, has made clear that Washington will answer any Canadian retaliation with further action of its own, raising the possibility of another round of escalation between the two longtime trading partners.
The increasingly heated economic confrontation is unfolding less than three months before the U.S. midterm elections, potentially injecting the trade dispute into closely watched Senate contests, particularly in Maine, Michigan, Ohio and Alaska.
Canada remains one of the United States’ most important economic partners, ranking as America’s second-largest trading partner behind Mexico.
