Canada response to Lake America: Mark Carney rejects Trump's executive order to rename Lake Ontario

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On Monday, the US President signed an executive order for the body of water, which straddles the two countries' borders, to be called by a new title, as part of an escalating trade war.

The attempt to rename Lake Ontario comes after Mr Trump ordered the Gulf of Mexico to be renamed as the Gulf of America, something that Mexico also rejected.

Mr Trump took a marker pen to a map in a video and crossed out Ontario to write America.

“We’re gonna make a little change; we’re gonna call it something different than Lake Ontario," he said. “We’re gonna call it Lake America. And all it takes is a good pen and some intelligence.”

Mr Carney tweeted: "The name Lake Ontario comes from the Wendat word Ontari’io, which, appropriately, means “the lake is beautiful, the lake is big”.

"The name is more than 400 years old, predating both the Confederation of Canada and the Declaration of Independence of the United States of America.

"We know that America is changing. Their trading relationships, their foreign policies, their national monuments, their hydronyms.

"Canadians also know that naming reality means calling it Lake Ontario – then, now and always."

The trade war has escalated after Mr Trump imposed 50% tariffs on $20 billion worth of Canadian goods, with Canada's Prime Minister retaliating in kind by imposing up to 50% tariffs on US imports.

Asked by a reporter what message he intended to send by renaming the lake, Mr Trump at first replied: “No message.”

However he added: “Canada has been ripping us off for a long time on trade.”

“They don’t pay for anything, and they want to be treated like a state, but they’re not a state."

Last year the President enraged many Canadians by advocating for the country to become the 51st state of North America.