Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney taunted Donald Trump on X over his unhinged push to rename Lake Ontario “Lake America.”
The 80-year-old president signed an executive order amid his escalating feud and trade war with Canada. “Canada has been ripping us off for a long time on trade,” Trump declared, as he ordered the Interior Department to update the Geographic Names Information System and adopt his newly invented moniker across the federal government.
“It’s something I’ve been thinking about for a long time,” Trump said.
The Canadian leader brushed off Trump’s attempt at a rebrand with a humiliating history lesson. Carney pointed out that the name Lake Ontario has survived for more than four centuries, and predates the founding of both Canada and the United States.
“The name Lake Ontario comes from the Wendat word Ontari’io, which, appropriately, means ‘the lake is beautiful, the lake is big,’” Carney wrote on X, referring to the smallest of the Great Lakes. “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.”
“We know that America is changing. Their trading relationships, their foreign policies, their national monuments, their hydronyms,” Carney continued, using the proper term for the name of a body of water while making a dig at Trump’s flip-flopping policies and his makeover of national landmarks since his return to the White House to the White House last January.
Carney insisted that his country will not be adopting Trump’s made-up name.
“Canadian women and men also know that things must be called by their name, and this lake is called Lake Ontario – today and forever.”
The Daily Beast has contacted the White House for comment.
Trump and Carney have clashed over the president’s tariffs on Canadian automobiles, with many Canadian provinces retaliating by pulling American liquor from store shelves.
Tensions escalated last week when trade talks between the two neighbors collapsed and Trump slapped 50 percent tariffs on $20 billion worth of Canadian goods. Next month, Canada is hitting back with “dollar for dollar” counter tariffs.
Trump’s executive order gives the Interior Department 30 days to update the name change.
The aging president pulled a similar move on the first day of his second term last January, signing an executive order to rename the Gulf of Mexico the “Gulf of America.” Mexico pushed back against the change, arguing that the U.S. doesn’t have the authority to alter the name of a shared body of international water.
