US President Donald Trump said on Tuesday that the US is considering renaming Lake Ontario to “Lake America” amid escalating trade tensions with Canada.
“The United States is giving serious consideration to changing the name of Lake Ontario to Lake America in that we don’t expect to do much business with Ontario any longer,” Trump wrote in a Truth Social post.
Another post on the social media platform contained an image of a map with “Lake Ontario” crossed out and “Lake America” spelled out in gold letters with the American flag.
Trump bashes Canada in social media flurry
The posts came amid a flurry of claims by the president against Canada, including that it has been “ripping off the US for decades” by charging US farmers more than 400% in tariffs, driving companies out of business, and causing the US to lose an average of $60 billion a year.
Canadian and US officials have been for several weeks caught up in an ongoing tit-for-tat tariff war that has rocked the countries' long-standing ties.
Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney said last week that "substantial progress" had been made in talks, but that there was still "important work to be done."
Canada on Tuesday, in an effort to match Washington’s latest duties dollar for dollar, hit back with retaliatory tariffs on about $20 billion worth of US annual imports.
Canada's Finance Minister François-Philippe Champagne said that the country's "dollar-for-dollar, rate-for-rate counter-tariffs as well as a multi-billion-dollar support package will protect workers, farmers, families, and businesses."
The tariffs are set to take effect on September 8 and impose duties of up to 50% for around 700 American products.
Meanwhile, Trump’s new 50% tariffs on $20 billion of Canadian imports went into effect on Saturday after failed talks between the two countries.
Commenting on the president’s social media posts, Minister for Canada-US Trade Dominic LeBlanc told CNBC that the federal government had decided “months ago not to respond to sort of the daily social media posts of either the president or his Cabinet secretaries,” according to CNN.
“We’re focused on doing what we can in Canada to build our economy and to having a constructive relationship with the government of the United States, our most important trading partner,” CNN cited him as saying.
Lake Ontario sits on the border between Canada and the US, although around 53% of it is Canada. It is the smallest and easternmost of the five Great Lakes of North America.
Trump has previously attempted to rename another body of water bordering the US. The Trump administration’s interior department announced last year that the Gulf of Mexico would be renamed the “Gulf of America,” a move that led to its adoption by US government agencies.