Donald Trump demands Apple rename Lake Ontario to Lake America

US President Donald Trump has asked Apple to update the name of Lake Ontario to "Lake America" on its navigation app, his administration's interior chief said on Monday, coming days after signing an executive order concerning the body of water currently highlighted by his escalating trade war with Canada.

Interior Secretary Doug Burgum told Fox's "Mornings with Maria" programme that Trump "reached out to Apple directly." He said he was confident that the "Lake America" label would be visible on its platform soon.

Apple did not offer an immediate response to the request. Only the Lake Ontario name appeared on its app as of Monday afternoon.

Just over the weekend, rival service Google Maps rolled out the new "Lake America" designation for US users looking at the body of water located between the state of New York and Canada’s Ontario province. The company cited the recent directive from Trump, alongside its established policy of applying names allocated by the US Geographic Names Information System, known as GNIS.

"People using Maps in the U.S. will see ‘Lake America,’ those in Canada will continue to see ‘Lake Ontario,’ and those outside of the U.S. and Canada will see both names," Google said in a brief statement on Saturday, reiterating that such updates "follow our long-standing policy for bodies of water with names that vary from country to country."

Trump announced the new "Lake America" name last week, marking one of his latest moves in an ongoing trade war with Canada that has seen tariffs raised on both sides of the border. His executive order on Friday directed the Interior Department to update the lake's title in the US geographic naming database.

The president cannot force Canada to adopt the change, however, and America's northern neighbours swiftly rejected the idea. The leader of the Seneca Nation in upstate New York also warned that the decision violates a treaty over 225 years old and displays a "blatant disrespect" for the Indigenous people who first named Lake Ontario.

This is not the first time Trump has moved to rename a body of water extending outside US borders. Last year, Trump instructed that the Gulf of Mexico be renamed the Gulf of America — after which both Apple and Google subsequently updated the label on their maps within the US.