With a map of the Great Lakes behind him, where the new name was written in large letters, the US president laid out his reasons for why a name change is important.
Canada has not shown respect "and we cannot have it that way," he said when he signed a presidential order on the change, which takes effect immediately.
They don't pay for anything, and they want to be treated like an (independent) state, but they are not, he said.
“No message”
At the same time, Trump claimed, when asked directly, that with the name change he was not trying to send a message to the neighbour to the north.
No message. As you know, Canada has long blown us away on trade issues.
Trump had threatened to change the name earlier this week after Canada responded to his punitive tariffs.
The country's response to the name change was not long in coming.
"The name is more than 400 years old, and is older than Canadian Confederation and the US Declaration of Independence," writes Prime Minister Mark Carney on X and continues:
"We know that America is changing, their trade relations, their foreign policy, their national monuments, their names for different bodies of water. Canadians also know that in reality it is called Lake Ontario – then, now, forever."
The Atlantic next?
The fact that Lake Ontario has been targeted by Trump's anger is because Doug Ford, premier of the province of Ontario, came out strongly against Trump's tariffs and, among other things, said that the president is a "loser" and "the king of bankruptcies."
Last year, Donald Trump changed the name of the Gulf of Mexico, which in the United States will now officially be called the Gulf of America, and he is threatening more name changes.
Now we have a gulf and a lake. Now we just need an ocean. So maybe we have to rename the Atlantic or the Pacific. Maybe both.
