According to a report by the US newspaper The Hill on August 25, Canadian Industrial Minister Mélanie Joly rejected President Trump's request to rename Lake Ontario as "American Lake" on Tuesday. She said that Canadians will always call it "Lake Ontario".
It is reported that Trump posted on social media that day: “We are seriously considering renaming Lake Ontario to ‘Lake America’, because it is expected that there will be no more economic and trade relations between us and Ontario, Canada in the future.”
Regarding this, Jolly told reporters at the press conference on that day: “We are proud of our Great Lakes. We have sailed on the Saint Lawrence River and the Great Lakes for thousands of years; these have been part of our nation’s foundation. We will defend everything we have.”
Amid the applause, Jolly added that despite “these farces being played out, we will remain rational, strategic, and take counteraction.”
The “farce” mentioned here also includes Trump’s trade negotiations with Canada. Those negotiations collapsed last week, and since then, the US and Canada have engaged in a tariff battle in areas such as steel, aluminum, and food products.
Trump’s warning is similar to his executive order in 2025 to rename the Gulf of Mexico as “United States Bay”. At that time, he described this move as retaliation against southern neighbors who “allowed millions of people to flood our country”.
According to reports, the White House official posted a photo on its Instagram account that appeared to be a map of the United States assembled from Lego pieces. Above the Great Lakes region, there was a label marked “American Lakes,” and similar labels were found in the southern bays, labeled “American Bays.”
