President-elect Donald Trump made a fairly stunning announcement throughout a information convention Tuesday (Jan. 7). In what many view as his latest assault on Mexico, Trump mentioned that his administration will rename the Gulf of Mexico the “Gulf of America.”
“We’re going to vary as a result of we do many of the work there and it’s ours,” Trump mentioned in accordance with a report from ABC Information. “It’s acceptable, and Mexico has to cease permitting hundreds of thousands of individuals to pour into our nation.”
He additionally blamed Mexico for the rise of medication coming into the U.S. and acknowledged that he would make Mexico and Canada pay by enacting “substantial tariffs.”
“We wish to get together with everyone. However you realize…it takes two to tango,” Trump remarked.
Regardless that he has a historical past of constructing false claims, Trump’s newest assertion begs the query: can he truly rename the Gulf of Mexico?
Trump didn’t present particulars on how he deal with the title change. Nonetheless, the gulf has had a number of names all through its historical past, with “Golfo de Mexico” first showing on maps within the mid-Sixteenth century.
Instantly after the convention, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene mentioned on X that she would introduce a invoice to formally change the title of the physique of water, which runs from Mexico alongside the southern a part of the US.
The method is extra sophisticated than that. The Worldwide Hydrographic Group (during which the U.S. and Mexico are members) ensures all of the world’s seas, oceans and navigable waters are surveyed pretty and even names a few of them.
In 2015, then-President Barack Obama signed off on the renaming of Alaska’s Mount McKinley — named after President William McKinley, who apparently by no means visited — to Denali, a named generally used amongst native Alaskans.
However even when Trump did rename the Gulf of Mexico, different nations don’t should agree or acknowledge it.
This isn’t the primary time a politician has floated across the thought. In 2012, former Mississippi State Rep. Steve Holland proposed a invoice that additionally would have renamed the gulf into the “Gulf of America.” Nonetheless, the Democrat insisted he was joking and used it as a option to denounce his Republican colleagues over their anti-immigrant beliefs.