A marker, a map and a TikTok post have now been written into federal policy. An executive order President Donald Trump signed on August 27, 2026, gave official force to his plan to rename Lake Ontario “Lake America.” A day earlier, a video had surfaced showing him striking out the Great Lake’s name on a map by hand with a Sharpie; the clip was posted to the president’s TikTok account on Wednesday, August 26, captioned “LAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!”
Signing the order in the Oval Office, Trump said: “Lake of America was something I’ve been thinking about for a long time. Actually, as you know, we took something called the Gulf of Mexico, we changed it, and now it’s very routinely the Gulf of America.” The order gives the interior secretary — Doug Burgum — 30 days to strip every reference to Lake Ontario from the Geographic Names Information System. The order calls the lake a “tremendous asset” and states: “The United States is the greatest protector of the Great Lakes, including the body of water currently known as Lake Ontario.”
The prop in the video is a map of the lake, whose shoreline the United States and Canada share, held up by the 80-year-old president as he sits in the Oval Office. Audio on the post is listed as “original sound – President Donald J Trump.”
A Map, a Marker and a Caption
The lake’s presence in both countries was Trump’s opening point, and the announcement of his edit followed. “But we’re gonna make a little change. We’re gonna call it something different than Lake Ontario,” Trump said in the clip. “And all it takes is a good pen and some intelligence.”
He struck out the existing name, wrote “LAKE AMERICA” above it and declared that Lake Ontario was gone, according to the video. The country now had both a lake and a gulf bearing America’s name, he continued. That nodded to the executive order of his second term’s first day, which sought to rename the Gulf of Mexico the Gulf of America — an effort that also drew ridicule.
A public trial balloon came first. On Truth Social on Tuesday, August 25, Trump said the United States was “giving serious consideration to changing the name of Lake Ontario to Lake America in that we don’t expect to be doing much business with Ontario any longer.”
The Trade War Behind the Stunt
Relations between Washington and Ottawa were deteriorating rapidly as the map stunt played out. Tariffs of 50 percent on about $20 billion in Canadian goods, proclaimed on July 20 and delayed once, took effect after midnight on Saturday, August 22, once last-minute talks collapsed. “You’re at war when you get attacked. We got attacked,” Prime Minister Mark Carney said. Countermeasures covering C$27.6 billion in U.S. imports, at rates of 15, 25 and 50 percent, were announced by Canada on August 25 and take effect September 8.
The quarrel has since grown personal. On Truth Social on August 24, Trump wrote of “lots of ‘bluster’ from Doug Ford,” describing the Ontario premier as “the less charismatic, intelligent, and overall unimpressive brother of the late, great, Rob Ford” and referring to him as Carney’s “Flunky.” Ford answered the same day, telling an Ottawa radio show that Trump could “kiss my ass” and then, at a news conference in Hamilton that afternoon, calling him a dictator and a bully. “I am not going to take any advice off a guy that is the king of bankruptcies,” Ford said.
Trump, for his part, told reporters his administration had already “notified all of the various people you have to notify.” In a Truth Social post over the weekend, he wrote that Canadians “want to be treated like a State, but they aren’t one,” adding: “They’ve been ripping us off for decades, and it’s going to stop.”
The lake is hardly the only grievance. Wildfire smoke drifting south from Canada has already drawn a warning from Trump of retaliation of some kind, and the Gordie Howe International Bridge between Windsor, Ontario, and Detroit has been another flashpoint, with Canadian officials sparring with him over sharing its revenue or ownership. Canada financed the span’s C$6.4 billion construction in full, and a July agreement now gives the United States half of net bridge and crossing revenues for the first 15 fiscal years.
Behind the playground insults sits real money. Prices on certain goods are expected to rise on both sides of the border because of the tariffs and countermeasures, even as the White House presses its argument in half-minute social media clips and escalating tensions online.
What the Renaming Actually Changes
Renaming a shared body of water demands far more than a marker and a steady hand. Authority over how federal agencies use geographic names rests with the U.S. Board on Geographic Names, which sits under the Interior Department and draws its staff support from the U.S. Geological Survey. On the American side the change has already gone through: the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency entered it in the U.S. Geographic Names Server on August 29, and Interior updated the domestic database. What that cannot do is bind anyone else. Canadian maps, Canadian textbooks and Canadian weather forecasts go on unchanged.
That same limitation tripped up the Gulf of America order. Google was sued by Mexico, which refused the change; Britain said it had no plans to recognize the new name, with sources citing common English usage; and The Associated Press, having refused as well, was barred from White House events. The lake has already produced the same split. Google updated its maps on August 29, following the federal database change, so that American users see “Lake America,” Canadian users still see “Lake Ontario” and everyone else sees “Lake Ontario (Lake America).” Burgum said Monday that Trump had contacted Apple directly and that he expected a change soon; as of Tuesday, Apple Maps still read “Lake Ontario.” MapQuest declined outright: “We’re not changing the name of Lake Ontario.” Its app went to No. 1 on Apple’s free chart over the weekend.
Trump’s Long-Running Sharpie Habit
The choice of tool surprised no one. The marker, sold by a U.S.-based company owned by Newell Brands, has a loyalist in Trump, who pulls one out at formal and casual occasions alike.
At a Cabinet meeting on March 26, the president riffed at length about the pens, waving an all-black one and calling it inexpensive but effective. He recounted paying $1,000 for pens in the past before, he said, phoning the head of Sharpie to have custom all-black markers made for the White House at roughly $5 each. The results, he said, had become “hot as a pistol,” and he added that the company does “tip me well.” A spokesperson for Newell Brands said the company had no information about the call Trump described.
A Trump Sharpie has redrawn a map before, too. In September 2019, during his first term, he used one to change a weather chart showing the forecast track of Hurricane Dorian, a story that dominated coverage for days.
At issue this time is a 7,340-square-mile lake shared with a neighbor and longtime ally whose prime minister has already compared the administration’s tariffs to war. Reaction since has crossed party lines. New York Gov. Kathy Hochul said the state “won’t be calling it that”; Rep. Debbie Dingell, D-Mich., introduced a bill on August 31, the Hands Off Our Great Lakes Act, to block the renaming and protect the official names of all five Great Lakes; Vermont’s Republican Gov. Phil Scott called it “petty and disappointing”; and the Seneca Nation, calling the order a treaty violation, demanded it be rescinded, its president, J. Conrad Seneca, saying that “the President cannot assert ownership over our culture or erase it through irresponsible political action.” No lawsuit has been filed. Carney noted the name is more than 400 years old, “pre-dating both the Confederation of Canada and the Declaration of Independence of the United States of America.”
Voters, meanwhile, have been unenthusiastic. A Reuters/Ipsos poll of 1,023 U.S. adults, conducted online over three days and ending Sunday, found 63 percent opposed renaming Lake Ontario to Lake America, against 14 percent in favor. On the new tariffs on Canadian goods, 57 percent were opposed and 20 percent supported them. The margin of error was 4 percentage points.
Asked for reaction by Fox News Digital, White House spokeswoman Taylor Rogers said: “Canada has been a bad neighbor by ripping off our country for years.” She added: “Thanks to the President’s bold leadership, we are putting America back on the map.”
Ford, for his part, unveiled a billboard on the Ontario shore near Hamilton on August 29 reading “Lake Ontario — Now and Always.” The same day, Trump posted an AI video of himself kicking over a “Welcome to Lake Ontario” sign, replacing it with one reading “Welcome to Lake America,” and dancing. What is clear is that the video, the executive order and the tariffs now belong to the same escalating quarrel, and neither capital looks ready to blink.
