Within one day of Donald J. Trump’s inauguration as the 47th president of the United States, he decided to change the name of the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America.
This move has created much controversy within the U.S. and across the globe, as media outlets and companies are split on whether to accept the name change. Trump does in fact have full authority to change the name of the Gulf, according to Anthony Ocepek, a teaching assistant professor and adviser who specializes in comparative politics.
Ocepek said Trump can appoint the Secretary of the Interior, who would then work with the heads of related agents, and “the board of geographic names can change the name to Gulf of America on official U.S. maps.”
“There’s no official way that the United States can force Canada, Mexico, Cuba or Europe to say, ‘No, you have to call this the Gulf of America,’” Ocepek said. “Countries are able to label things as they choose.”
Although Mexico and Cuba also border the Gulf of Mexico, they cannot control what Trump wants to do in his power despite Mexico’s president, Claudia Sheinbaum, being completely against it.
“Mexico and Cuba can protest. They can lodge diplomatic protests against the United States, [and] they can lodge protests against the move in the international system,” said Ocepek. “But again, in the end, countries can have a lot of leeway in naming what they would like to be named.”
Jacob Schiller, teaching assistant professor in the department of political science, said the renaming of the Gulf of Mexico is within the scope of Trump’s “Make America Great Again” campaign.
“I think there is some allusion to this era of the United States being this growing power,” Schiller said. “All of these claims he’s making about possible territorial expansion — this is one cheap, easy way for him to fill that void.”
Schiller emphasized that there is a “honeymoon period” all presidents face, and Trump is experiencing “the most amount of support” from his voters in the first weeks of his presidency.
“Trump supporters would say he’s just wasting no time [and is] doing exactly what he promised that he would do,” said Schiller. “And ‘Finally, we’ve got someone who’s standing up and doing what they promised and working for the everyman.’”
Despite the initial strong strides, there is the opposing argument that Steve Bannon, Trump’s former advisor, would describe as “flooding the zone.” According to Schiller, this means that Trump will put out many things at once “and things will slip through the cracks” to create distraction.
The controversy over the naming of the Gulf of Mexico is similar to the constant pushback between the Denali and Mount McKinley naming dispute in Alaska.
“Alaskan government, lawmakers and indigenous peoples have been pushing since the 1970s to have it called Denali from Mount McKinley,” Ocepek said. “The Obama administration went through and did it, and now [there is an] idea of turning it back.”
According to Ocepek, the Gulf of Mexico’s name change has already gone into effect — there are reports that the Coast Guard is beginning to rebrand. In addition, Google has also begun the process of renaming the “Gulf of Mexico” as “Gulf of America.”
Schiller said the name change only affects the United States, and the executive order only truly impacts the federal government.
“Any state is up to call[ing] it whatever they want to,” Schiller said. “We would expect the most Republican-led states to accept the name change and most Democratic-led states to resist that name.”
Schiller also said Trump wants to make his voters feel rewarded, and creating these big decisions demonstrates an immediate accomplishment for his administration.
“His theme is kind of restoring nationalism, patriotism, [and] being proud to be American,” Schiller said. “It makes the supporters happy [and] he confounds his opponents … it’s a distraction from the bigger things he wants to accomplish.”