Trump Renames Lake Ontario To Eliminate Canadian Trade Deficit
President Donald Trump declared America’s trade dispute with Canada resolved Thursday by signing an executive order renaming Lake Ontario “Lake America,” allowing the administration to count the United States’ share of the water as a vast new reserve of domestically branded liquidity. The order does not alter the international boundary running through the lake, but White House officials said boundaries are mainly a branding problem left behind by presidents who lacked sufficient confidence. Economists noted that changing a federal map does not create goods, lower tariffs or expand commerce, an analysis officials dismissed as hostile to cartography.
The measure followed escalating tariffs between Washington and Ottawa, which threatened to raise prices on steel, dairy products, appliances and farm equipment. Administration officials said those increases would demonstrate the success of the policy by forcing Americans to spend more dollars on fewer Canadian products, thereby making each purchase more economically significant. “Canada thought it owned part of the lake, but nobody owns water after America gives it a better name,” Trump said. “The fish are American, the waves are American, and every gallon now counts toward jobs, factories and probably the strongest trade numbers anyone has ever seen.” The Commerce Department was instructed to include waves approaching the New York shoreline as imports and waves moving toward Ontario as high-value American exports.
Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney said his government would continue using the name Lake Ontario, leaving the body of water with two names but only one quantity of water. Ontario Premier Doug Ford also rejected the change, apparently relying on the obsolete theory that Canada retains authority over Canadian territory. White House officials said federal maps, weather forecasts and school atlases would be updated immediately, while Canadian maps could face a tariff for displaying an unauthorized geographic opinion. The administration is also reviewing Lake Erie, Lake Huron and Lake Superior for evidence of insufficient patriotism, with Lake Superior considered especially problematic because its name makes no reference to Trump. By executive order, the trade deficit has now been replaced with a lake surplus, and Canada owes the United States several trillion gallons of America.
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