U.S. President Donald Trump renamed Lake Ontario "Lake America" on Thursday, escalating a feud with Canada that has already spawned tariffs on tens of billions of dollars in cross-border trade, Reuters reports.
Trump's executive order on Lake Ontario, one of the five Great Lakes of North America, applies to U.S. federal usage about the lake, and does not govern what Canada, international bodies or other organizations call the lake.
Within hours of Trump's statement, the prime minister of Canada and the Democratic governor of New York State said they would not be changing the name, which is more than 400 years old. New York borders the lake on the U.S. side.
"We're going to be changing the name of Lake Ontario effective immediately to Lake America," Trump told reporters in the Oval Office. "The lake change, the Lake of America, was something I've been thinking about for a long time, actually."
Trade talks between the U.S. and Canada collapsed last week with each side blaming the other for derailing three days of intensive negotiations.
Facing the lowest public approval of his term, Trump -- who campaigned on a pledge to avoid starting new foreign wars and fight inflation -- is struggling to resolve both the trade war his administration initiated with Ottawa as well as the war the U.S. and Israel began against Iran six months ago. Both have played a role in driving up the cost of living for Americans.
