Trump signs order changing Lake Ontario’s name ‘effective immediately’

President Trump signed an executive order Thursday formally changing the name of Lake Ontario to “Lake America” amid the U.S. trade war with Canada.

“We’re going to be changing the name of Lake Ontario effective immediately to Lake America,” Trump told reporters before he signed an executive order renaming the body of water.

Beside Trump in the Oval Office, placards of the Great Lakes were displayed, with “Lake America” named over Lake Ontario.

“We filed all of the necessary papers, documents, [and] everything else. We’ve notified all of the various people you have to notify,” the president said.

The executive order comes after Trump first publicly floated changing the name of the easternmost Great Lake earlier this week as the trade war picked up between Washington and Ottawa.

The president told reporters he had been thinking about renaming Lake Ontario for “a long time.”

Ontario Premier Doug Ford responded earlier this week to the president’s initial threats to rename the lake, calling it “a lot of rhetoric.”

This is not the first time Trump has renamed a body of water bordering the U.S. and another country. Last year, Trump signed an executive order renaming the Gulf of Mexico to the “Gulf of America.”

“If you think about it, we have a gulf, now we have a lake, now all we need is an ocean,” Trump quipped. Maybe we’ll have to change the name of the Atlantic and/or the Pacific. Maybe we’ll change them both.”

Trade tensions between Washington and Ottawa devolved into an all-out trade war over the weekend after Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney removed negotiators from trade talks with the U.S.

Carney’s move came before a new set of tariffs from the Trump administration on Canada were set to go into effect.

The prime minister then announced Ottawa would enact retaliatory tariffs in response to the U.S.’s new 50 percent tariffs starting Sept. 8. The Canadian leader said during a press conference that his nation would “match Washington’s new tariffs dollar for dollar in order to protect Canadian workers, farmers, families and businesses.”