Lake Ontario to become Lake America? Trump floats name change amid Canada trade war

Amid escalating trade spat with Canada, US President Donald Trump has found another battleground -- and this time, it is a lake. On Tuesday, Trump said that he is considering renaming Lake Ontario as Lake America, linking the move to his growing confrontation with Canada's most populous province and its premier trade partner, Ontario.

"The United States is giving serious consideration to changing the name of Lake Ontario to Lake America in that we don't expect to doing much business with Ontario any longer," Trump wrote on social media.

Lake Ontario is hardly the first piece of geography Trump has sought to put an American stamp on. His proposal fits a broader pattern of floating dramatic changes to borders, territories and place names -- from renaming the Gulf of Mexico the "Gulf of America" to repeatedly suggesting that Canada become the 51st US state. He has also raised the possibility of the US taking control of the Strait of Hormuz, calling it "new US territory". Against that backdrop, Trump's latest idea to call Lake Ontario "Lake America" looks less like an isolated naming quirk.