Signing the order Thursday in the Oval Office, Trump said it was not a direct message to Canada, but that the United States’ northern neighbor “has been shortchanging us on trade for a long time.” Trump said he had been thinking about renaming the lake “for a long time.” “So if you think about it, we have a gulf and a lake,” Trump said. “Now, all we need is an ocean. So maybe we have to change the name of the Atlantic or the Pacific. Maybe we change both.” The name change request comes amid a trade dispute that has seen relations between the United States and Canada fall to new lows, with insults exchanged between the Trump administration and Canadian officials over the past week. There was an indication on Thursday that there was room to return to the negotiating table at some point in the future. US Canadian Trade Minister Dominic LeBlanc said in a post on “We look forward to further constructive clarifications from the US on its other positions, which would create the possibility of a mutually beneficial trade agreement that respects Canadian sovereignty.” Trade talks collapsed at the last minute Friday night, with both sides accusing each other of demanding last-minute changes to a tentative deal. Democratic lawmaker Debbie Dingell of Michigan, the US state that borders four of the five Great Lakes, said she would introduce a bill in Congress to overturn the name change, calling Trump’s order “idiotic.” She wrote: “The Great Lakes are a shared treasure that generations of Americans and Canadians have worked together to protect.” Other Democratic lawmakers in the United States also criticized the order on social media and called for the Trump administration to renegotiate a trade deal. Some mocked Trump’s idea and posted their own ideas for changing the names of other landmarks. Wisconsin’s governor joked, “I just renamed Lake Michigan to Lake Wisconsin,” in a social media post with a video of himself signing a napkin on one of the Great Lakes. “Look, I can also sign napkins that say things,” he added. New York Governor Kathy Hochul said her state, the only one in the United States that borders Lake Ontario, “will not call it” Lake America. Meanwhile, Trump’s Interior Secretary Doug Burgum applauded the move, writing, “We’re on it, Mr. President!” Geological Survey “maps our country for the world to see, and we are PROUD to implement their Executive Order to rename LAKE AMERICA.”
