MEXICO CITY >> Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum has an answer for U.S. President Donald Trump about his idea of renaming the Gulf of Mexico to the “Gulf of America:” he can call it whatever he wants on the American part of it.
Sheinbaum on Tuesday had been working through the raft of executive orders from Trump that relate to Mexico, emphasizing Mexico’s sovereignty and the need for dialogue, but when she got to the renaming of the Gulf of Mexico, she couldn’t help but laugh.
“He says that he will call it the Gulf of America on its continental shelf,” Sheinbaum said. “For us it is still the Gulf of Mexico, and for the entire world it is still the Gulf of Mexico.”
Trump said in his inaugural address Monday that he will change the name, an idea he first brought up earlier this month during a news conference.
“A short time from now, we are going to be changing the name of the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America,” he said. Hours later he signed an Executive Order to do it.
Sheinbaum projected on a large screen at her daily press briefing Trump’s order called “Restoring Names that Honor American Greatness.”
The order says that within 30 days, the U.S. secretary of the interior will rename “the U.S. Continental Shelf area bounded on the northeast, north and northwest by the States of Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama and Florida and extending to the seaward boundary with Mexico and Cuba.”
The first time Trump mentioned the idea of changing the name of the Gulf of Mexico, Sheinbaum sarcastically suggested instead renaming North America as “Mexican America.”