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Renaming Lake Ontario to “Lake America” will come at a cost to federal agencies in the U.S. that are responsible for updating maps and databases, and a previous report by the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) offers insight into how expensive this could be.
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U.S. President Donald Trump signed an executive order changing the name of the lake on Aug. 27, which directed the Department of the Interior to update maps and databases to reflect the new name.
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It’s not the first time Trump has sought to rename a major body of water. In January 2025, he signed an executive order changing the name of the Gulf of Mexico to the “Gulf of America.”
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Following this, in April 2025, CBO published a report estimating that the Gulf of Mexico name change could cost up to US$500,000 between 2025 and 2030.
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In an email to National Post, a spokesperson for CBO said: “CBO hasn’t published an estimate for H.R. 10196, the Lake America Act. The closest precedent is the estimate for H.R. 276, the Gulf of America Act. While that estimate can’t automatically be applied to Lake Ontario, it can provide a sense of how CBO has previously treated similar legislation.”
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The 2025 report said the estimate was based on the cost of similar activities that involved updating documents and maps. It added that the Gulf of America Act “could affect direct spending by some agencies that are allowed to use fees, receipts from the sale of goods, and other collections to cover operating costs.”
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However, CBO estimated that any changes in spending by those agencies would be negligible because “most of them can adjust amounts collected to reflect changes in operating costs.”
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If the cost of renaming Lake Ontario does come in at a similar figure to the estimate for the Gulf of Mexico, it would mean U.S. federal agencies may have spent as much as US$1 million on renaming the two bodies of water.
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- J.D. Tuccille: Trump shouldn’t have the authority to rename Lake Ontario
- Republican mayor from Lake Ontario city rejects Trump’s ‘Lake America’
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Elsewhere, the CBO issued another report earlier this year estimating the cost of introducing “Department of War” as a secondary title for the U.S. Department of Defense, after Trump signed an executive order authorizing the use of the new name in September 2025.
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It said a “modest implementation” of the name could cost US$10 million, or as much as US$125 million if the name change was implemented “broadly and rapidly.” A statutory renaming, the CBO said, could cost hundreds of millions of dollars.
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Meanwhile, over the weekend, Trump suggested renaming New Mexico to “New America” in a post on Truth Social, accompanied by an AI-crafted video of him changing a roadside billboard and dancing.
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Another post that showed a map of New Mexico with “Mexico” crossed out and replaced by “America” was reminiscent of posts he made before renaming Lake Ontario.
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New media post from Donald J. Trump
( TS: Sep 7 2026, 10:42 AM ET ) pic.twitter.com/yNtvVjqSYt
— Commentary Donald J. Trump Truth Social Posts On X (@TrumpTruthOnX) September 7, 2026