When Donald Trump signed one of his first executive orders of his second term, renaming the Gulf of Mexico the Gulf of America in January 2025, the world gasped.

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It hadn't seen such arrogance since Benito Mussolini declared his ambition to turn the Mediterranean into an Italian lake in the 1930s.

Fast forward to last week and Trump's executive order renaming Lake Ontario "Lake America" was met with a global shrug. Even his musing that he might similarly rename the Pacific or Atlantic garnered a collective 'Whatever'.

Not only has the US president squandered American prestige with his disastrous war with Iran, he's used up his shock value. Flooding the zone with outrageous distractions - Lake America timed to draw attention from the six-month milestone of the Iran war - has worn thin.

Even investors have grown weary of jumping at every bombastic broadside Trump posts on Truth Social. Last month, Business Insider said markets had become numb to the president's social media posts. Wall Street, it said, had come to think of his aggressive missives as background noise.

The wild swings in crude oil prices on the back of Trump's social media posts we saw a couple of months ago have calmed down. Trading houses which signed up for advance notice of Trump posts at great cost must now feel a little scammed.

US voters aren't paying much attention either, with record numbers disapproving of the way Trump had handled the war and the domestic economy. He can rant and rave and rename until he's blue in the face but if no one's paying attention he might as well be the old man shouting at clouds.

London-based financial intelligence website TACT explained why the world has tuned out to Trump: "What began as fearful but intent listening, then morphed into stunned incredulity, has now become dismissal. Statements made one day are brazenly, seemingly without irony, and unapologetically reversed the next. Threats are issued and then diluted. Red lines appear and disappear almost at random. At this point, many governments, markets and foreign........

© Canberra Times