Trump wants to change the name of Gulf of Mexico to ‘Gulf of America’

President-elect Donald Trump said Tuesday (January 7) that he would move to try to rename the Gulf of Mexico to the “Gulf of America,” a name he said has a “beautiful ring to it.”

“We’re going to be changing the name of the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America,” Trump said at a news conference at his Mar-a-Lago Club in Palm Beach, Florida. “… What a beautiful name, and it’s appropriate.”

The president-elect subsequently decried the Mexican government for allowing migrants to “pour” into the United States, saying Mexico “can stop them and we’re going to put very serious tariffs on Mexico and Canada because Canada, they come through Canada, too.”

Trump provided no additional details about how he planned to implement the name change, but the comments sparked immediate questions about whether a president has the authority to rename an international body of water, and prompted at least one Republican member of Congress to draft legislation.

Since his first run for the White House in 2016, Trump has repeatedly clashed with Mexico over a number of issues, including border security and the imposition of tariffs on imported goods. He vowed then to build a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border and make Mexico pay for it. The U.S. ultimately constructed or refurbished about 450 miles of wall during his first term._Agencies