WASHINGTON: Google redesignated Lake Ontario as “Lake America” on maps seen by US users Sunday after President Donald Trump announced he was renaming the body of water, with a Canadian official slamming the cross-border tensions as “absolutely backwards.”
People in Canada will still see the body of water labeled Lake Ontario, the Indigenous-rooted name used since the 17th century, on their devices and computers, the US-based tech giant said.
The nomenclatural spat erupted as the latest element of Trump’s “America First” narrative, with the longtime allies ramping up a trade war that has seen Washington and Ottawa slap tit-for-tat tariffs on each other.
Trump launched a new salvo of criticism Sunday, taking aim at the auto industry — even as the United States and Canada have deeply interconnected auto manufacturing sectors, with a hefty amount of Canadian parts used in US-made vehicles.
“I don’t want Canadian cars, I don’t want Canadian parts, I don’t want Canadian anything,” Trump seethed in a post on his Truth Social platform.
