Since winning the election, President-elect Donald Trump embraced the idea of seizing Greenland, the Panama Canal and Canada through military or economic coercion. His “America First” foreign policy agenda doesn’t end there. More recently, Trump said he wants to rename the Gulf of Mexico the Gulf of America, which, he claims, has a “beautiful ring.”
“That covers a lot of territory, the Gulf of America. What a beautiful name. And it’s appropriate. It’s appropriate. And Mexico has to stop allowing millions of people to pour into our country,” he said, per CBS News.
Mexico president pushes back
Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum doesn’t approve of this idea. At one of her recent press briefings, she pointed to a colonial-era map of North America that marked present-day states of California, Nevada, Utah, Arizona and New Mexico as a part of the América Mexicana territory.
She proposed changing the name back. “Why don’t we call it América Mexicana? That sounds nice, no?” Sheinbaum said.
According to NBC News, Jose Alfonso Suarez del Real, a politician and former cultural secretary, explained that the name América Mexicana was on “the European map commissioned for the Dutch East India Company, based in Amsterdam” in 1607 at the press conference.
“Between Florida and Yucatán, the Mexican Gulf is recognized as a fundamental nautical point for navigation from the 17th century onwards,” he said, according to Axios.
U.S. lawmakers on board to change name to Gulf of America
Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., posted on X, that she would introduce legislation to try to make Trump’s proposed name change a reality.
“I’ll be introducing legislation ASAP to officially change the name of the Gulf of Mexico to its rightful name, the Gulf of America!”
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., in his remarks on the floor Wednesday said that Trump “throws out a lot of strange, and rather random, ideas on a regular basis.”
But he added, facetiously, “I’d agree to working with Donald Trump on renaming the Gulf of Mexico, only if he first agrees to work with us on an actual plan to lower costs for Americans.”
“That is what the American people want us to focus on first, not on renaming bodies of water,” Schumer said.