The Poll Numbers Are In on 'Lake America.' Even Republicans Don't Like It.

The renaming order was always going to get attention. What a new Reuters-Ipsos poll shows is that attention didn't turn into support — not from Democrats, not from independents, and not even from most of President Trump's own party.

Americans oppose the executive order renaming Lake Ontario "Lake America" by 63% to 14%. Break that down further and it gets more striking: Trump's fellow Republicans oppose it too, 43% to 33%. On an issue this symbolic, that's not a rounding error — that's a president's own base declining to back him.

The trade war itself polls even worse. Americans oppose the new tariffs on Canada by nearly 3-to-1, 57% to 20%.

This isn't just a naming dispute. The US imposed a 50% tariff on roughly $20 billion of Canadian imports, and Canada hit back with retaliatory tariffs on about $20 billion of American goods — including everyday items like cheese, clothing, cosmetics, and toilet paper. Those are the kinds of prices people notice at the store, regardless of which side of the border dispute they're on.

Trump has weathered unpopular tariff fights before. What makes this one notable is the polling shows it landing as more unpopular than his earlier trade actions — and doing so at the same time as a largely symbolic move (renaming a lake most Americans have never stood next to) that seems to be actively working against him rather than serving as a distraction from the economic fight.

Lawmakers from both parties have already publicly pushed back on the renaming specifically, with some calling it "preposterous." The trade war itself has no clear end date. The lake, for what it's worth, is still called Lake Ontario on every map that isn't a US federal document.