President Donald Trump signed an executive order Thursday, renaming Lake Ontario Lake America amid trade tensions with Canada.
The move comes less than a week after prospects of a trade deal with Canada collapsed and days after he announced a 50 percent tariff on Canadian autos and steel set to kick in next year.
“We’re going to be changing the name of Lake Ontario effective immediately to Lake America. That’s going to take place right now as I sign the order,” Trump said.
The order specifically instructs Secretary of the Interior Doug Burgum to update the lake’s name in the Geographic Names Information Service. On Tuesday, the White House shared a video where Trump crossed out Lake Ontario on a map and replaced it with Lake America.
When asked what message the name change sends, Trump said there was “no message” he was sending to Canada, but proceeded to say America’s neighbor to the north has long been “ripping” the United States off.
“As you know, Canada has been ripping us off for a long time on trade, very sadly. Even the military, you know, we defend Canada for nothing. We don’t get anything. They don’t pay us to defend Canada, but we defend Canada, and they understand that,” Trump said.
“As an example, we bought icebreakers. They’d like to use them. We have 11 brand new icebreakers coming in. They’d like to use the icebreakers. They don’t pay for anything, and they want to be treated like a state, but they’re not a state. But they want to be treated like they’re a state, and so we just can’t do that anymore,” he added.
Trump said that over the past 15 years, the U.S. has been losing an average of $6o billion a year to Canada.
“We lose on average over the last 15 years, $60 billion a year carrying Canada, so we just can’t do it anymore. We love the people of Canada. I don’t think their representatives do an appropriate job. Maybe they’ll change. I really don’t know. It doesn’t make much difference,” he said.
Trump said he has been thinking about the name change for a long time.
“So, the lake change, the 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,” he said
“If you think about it, we have a gulf, and we have a lake. Now, all we need is an ocean. So, maybe we’ll have to change the name of the Atlantic and or the Pacific. Maybe we’ll change them both,” he added.
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