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Trump Proposes Renaming Lake Ontario to Lake America Amid Trade Dispute With Canada

evening · · thread: Twenty Five US States Sue to Block Trump's New Global Tariffs

11 sources across 7 countries

Who reported this

  • MS NOW United States · Left · Versant (spun off from NBCUniversal)
  • CNN United States · Centre-left · Warner Bros. Discovery
  • Associated Press United States · Centre · Non-profit news cooperative
  • Bloomberg United States · Centre · Bloomberg L.P. (Michael Bloomberg)
  • G1 Brazil · Centre-left · Grupo Globo (Marinho family)
  • CNN Brasil Brazil · Centre · Rubens Menin (MRV)
  • La Nacion Argentina · Centre-right · Saguier family
  • Sueddeutsche Zeitung Germany · Centre-left · Sudwestdeutsche Medien Holding
  • South China Morning Post Hong Kong · Centre-right · Alibaba Group
  • Telex Hungary · Centre · Reader-funded, staff-owned
  • Business Day South Africa · Centre-right · Arena Holdings (Lebashe Investment Group)

What the colours mean

  • Left
  • Centre-left
  • Centre
  • Centre-right
  • Right
  • A hatched block means the outlet is affiliated with, or controlled by, a state.

Political lean describes where an outlet sits within the politics of its own country. It is never a position on a single global scale.

Political lean is comparable inside one country and not across them, which is why the bar groups by country first. Publicly funded broadcasters are not marked as state-linked.

The owner of each outlet is listed as a matter of record, not as a judgement about the outlet.

President Donald Trump announced on Tuesday that the United States is considering renaming Lake Ontario to Lake America. The statement, posted on Truth Social, followed the collapse of trade negotiations between Washington and Ottawa. Trump stated that the change is being considered because the United States does not expect to do much business with Ontario any longer. He later shared an image of a map where the name Lake Ontario was crossed out and replaced with Lake America in gold lettering. Lake Ontario is the smallest of the five Great Lakes and forms a border between the state of New York and the Canadian province of Ontario.

The proposal comes as a trade war intensifies between the two nations. The U.S. government recently enacted 50 percent tariffs on approximately 20 billion dollars of Canadian goods. Trump has further threatened to increase tariffs on Canadian vehicles, automotive parts, and steel to 50 percent starting January 1, 2027. In response, Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney announced that Canada would implement retaliatory tariffs. Ontario Premier Doug Ford has criticized the U.S. president and suggested that the province could restrict electricity exports to the United States.

Canadian Minister for U.S. Trade Dominic LeBlanc stated that the federal government would not respond to daily social media posts from the U.S. administration. This renaming effort follows a previous action by Trump to rename the Gulf of Mexico as the Gulf of America. While U.S. government agencies and the Coast Guard adopted that name, other countries did not recognize the change. The current dispute also involves disagreements over digital services and the protection of the French language in Canada.

How each side framed it

Left
This outlet framed the renaming proposal as part of a farcical pattern of rebranding and fixation on bodies of water.
Centre-left
These outlets highlighted the escalating tension and provided more detail on the specific retaliatory threats from Canadian officials.
Centre
These outlets focused on the factual sequence of the trade dispute and the specific wording of the president's social media posts.
Centre-right
These outlets emphasized the economic risks to industries and consumers on both sides of the border due to the trade war.

Sources

100% of the statements in this article were traced back to the source articles listed above.