Canadian snowbirds and tourists on longer visits to the United States will have to register with the U.S. government within 30 days, under an executive order President Donald Trump signed on his first day in office.

It was one in a series of tit-for-tat threats and moves on Tuesday in the escalating trade war between the U.S. and Canada. Here’s what you need to know:

Privileged no longer

The Department of Homeland Security posted a draft of its plans for enforcing the registration order for visitors.

The official point of the order is to deal with “an unprecedented flood of illegal immigration into the United States.” It emphasized the penalties faced by illegal migrants in the U.S.: no matter how somebody entered the country, being in the U.S. without registering as an “alien” is itself a federal crime.

Whoever the targets are, however, Canadians are likely to feel the brunt.

Most legitimate visitors to the United States are registered automatically, including anyone who gets a visa before travelling and has it checked at an entry point, and those who get so-called I-94 forms, which are routinely issued at airports and seaports. It wasn’t immediately clear what the implications are for Canadian students at U.S. universities.

The big exception: Canadians crossing into the U.S. by land for purposes that don’t require visas, who get waved through after quick chats with border officers. They are generally allowed to stay in the U.S. for six months, but not without formally reporting their presence.

Under long-standing rules, such visitors were always supposed to register. A version of the requirement dates back to a 1940 law requiring non-citizens to go to post offices to record personal details and submit to fingerprinting. Millions did so then.

Enforcement, however, has been lax—so much so that the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Service doesn’t even have a form or process for registering yet. The draft plan suggests an online form, with no need for fingerprinting, will be enough for Canadian visitors.

Now, says the U.S. government, “no alien will have an excuse for failure to comply with this law.” 

Metals and electricity

Trump also threatened Tuesday to double incoming tariffs on Canadian steel and aluminum in response to Ontario upping the cost of its U.S. electricity exports—a retaliatory move the province later agreed to suspend in favour of talks about renewing the continental trade deal. Later in the day, Trump reversed his stance and told reporters he was reevaluating the threat, and would “probably” back down on doubling the steel and aluminum tariffs. 

Ontario Premier Doug Ford had applied a 25 per cent surcharge to electricity exports to the U.S. on Monday—adding $10 per megawatt-hour to the cost for about 1.5 million homes and businesses in Michigan, Minnesota and New York state. That had Trump saying he would soon declare “a National Emergency on Electricity within the threatened area” and increase the tariffs on Canadian steel and aluminium to 50 per cent.

On Tuesday afternoon, though, Ford and U.S. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick posted a joint statement on social media saying the two politicians—one the leader of a subnational government and the other a member of the U.S. federal cabinet—had a “productive conversation about the economic relationship between the United States and Canada.”

The statement did not mention steel or aluminum, but said Lutnick agreed to meet Ford in Washington on Thursday alongside U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer to discuss a renewed United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA) before April 2, which is when Trump has said he will end the partial reprieve on broad-based tariffs for Canada and Mexico. The joint statement also said Ontario agreed to suspend its surcharge on U.S. electricity exports in response.

Trump announced last month he would restore and increase national security tariffs on all foreign steel and aluminum, imposing 25 per cent duties on both. Those tariffs, scheduled to take effect Wednesday at 12:01 a.m. EDT, remove an exemption Canada has had since 2019.

Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre called on Ottawa to retaliate with 50 per cent tariffs on both metals from the U.S. “These attacks will only harden our resolve,” he wrote.

Newly elected Liberal Leader Mark Carney, who is set to be the next prime minister, said on social media his government would keep retaliatory tariffs in place “until the Americans show us respect and make credible, reliable commitments to free and fair trade.” 

Market volatility   

A three-week-long stock sell-off extended through Tuesday, suggesting investors have started to question the so-called “Trump put,” the idea that if the markets sink too deeply, the president will adjust his policies. 

The “Trump put,” is a spinoff of the “Fed put,” the notion that the federal reserve will insert stimulus if the economy drops too much, and stems from the idea that options are used in a portfolio to limit downside. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent rejected the idea, telling CNBC on Friday, “There’s no put.”

“The Trump call on the upside is, if we have good policies, then the markets will go up.”

That hasn’t necessarily played out. The U.S. dollar has dropped more than 4.7 per cent since the start of January, the biggest yearly fall in its value since the 2008 recession. It fell 0.57 per cent over the day on Tuesday to 4:20 p.m EDT.

Meanwhile, the S&P 500 dropped 0.76 per cent Tuesday, after having its worst daily fall of the year Monday. The tech-heavy Nasdaq fell 0.18 per cent, while the blue-chip Dow Jones Industrial Average dipped 1.14 per cent on markets close Tuesday. The VIX, a measure of market volatility, has risen 13.99 per cent over the past five days, to 26.70. A value of over 30 is typically considered highly volatile.

In Canada, the S&P/TSX composite index—which tracks the largest equities on the Canadian stock exchange—lost 0.54 per cent during the trading day. 

The U.S. administration seems “to be writing off significant economic and market disruption as just part of the process,” Robert Kavcic, a BMO senior economist wrote in a note Tuesday afternoon. Though the disruptive nature of tariffs “could be overestimated” by the markets, National Bank analyst Jocelyn Paquet wrote in a note, but “this additional layer of uncertainty is added at a time when the U.S. economy appears vulnerable, making the situation more worrying.” 

Trump’s trade strategy has become too unpredictable, thus losing “some of its effectiveness,” CIBC Research Central’s Ian de Verteuil wrote in a note Monday. Though the U.S. was initially headed for a soft landing, RBC’s chief economist Frances Donald wrote in a note Tuesday, a  few “yellow flags” in economic indicators have popped up and threaten to upend the economy.