Dust up?

Reader question:

Please explain this comment on the war of tariffs between the United States and Canada: Canada can’t win a dust up with Trump.

My comments:

Every day, there’s an enormous amount of goods crossing the border between the United States of Canada. If a full on tariff war breaks loose, goods crossing borders will cost more. As a result, importers will buy less – and look toward other trading partners for answers.

In consequence, consumers suffer in the long run.

This is true for both countries, but especially Canada. In 2024, according to Statistics Canada, the United States was the destination for 75.9% of Canada’s total exports, and was the source of 62.2% of Canada’s total imports.

In other words, for Canadian businesses, of every four export dollars earned, three comes from the United States.

Hence the above comment: Canada can’t win a dust up with Trump.

Donald Trump, that is, the American President who is responsible for the trade war between the two North American neighbors. Trump imposed sweeping tariffs on Canadian goods unilaterally – without being provoked.

Without going further into the wrong or right of it, though, let’s turn our attention to the fact that Canada cannot win a dust up with Trump.

Let’s turn the focus of our attention, in fact, to the expression “dust up”.

A dust up, or dust-up, refers to a fight or quarrel that’s getting or has got out of hand, leading to bigger and wider consequences – like a cloud of dust that grows in size.

Literally, dust-up refers to dusts that flare up in the air. If you’ve ever swept the dirty floor, you’ll readily understand this.

You have swept the floor once or twice in your life, right?

Anyways, dust-up refers to the DUST on the floor that rises UP, forming a cloud of fine powder in the air.

Fine powder?

Here, fine means small, very small.

Not to put too fine a point on that, let’s return to the point of our discussion, dust-up.

So, having a dust-up with someone is to have a quarrel or fight that results in a metaphorical cloud of dust, mess and confusion.

Think of the aftermath of an explosion of a grenade in the battlefield.

In our example, Canada cannot afford engaging in a trade war with America because it is too dependent on its southern neighbor.

There’s too much at stake.

Canada has too much to lose.

All right?

All right, let’s read a few media examples of people having a dust-up of one type or another with others:

1. Taylor Swift’s entourage had a dust-up with photographers as she arrived at Arrowhead Stadium to watch Travis Kelce and the Kansas City Chiefs take on the Denver Broncos.

Swift wore a black shirt with a red skirt and had a jacket draped over her shoulders. A video posted to X showed two members of her team stomping toward photographers snapping pictures of her entrance into the stadium and yelling at them to stand up.

“Stand up, stand up, stand up,” one man was heard yelling. “… Thank you guys very much.”

The team members didn’t explain why members of the media had to stand up. Swift’s fans speculated on social media that it could have been to protect photographers from shooting up her skirt.

In any case, Swift was back at the facility to cheer on the Chiefs. She watched Kelce catch a touchdown pass and tie the franchise record for most touchdown receptions for a Chiefs player in their career with 76. Tony Gonzalez had held the record.

Kansas City was also looking to keep their undefeated streak going. Swift has brought some good luck to the team over the course of the calendar year. She has yet to witness a Chiefs loss in 2024, and Kansas City hasn’t lost since Christmas Day last year.

The upstart Broncos would love to hand their AFC West rivals their first blemish of the year.

- Taylor Swift’s entourage has dust-up with photographers before Chiefs game, FoxNews.com, November 10, 2024.

2. Meghan Markle is facing even MORE drama with her ill-fated As Ever push!

No, you’re not about to get déjà vu with this story… this is a SECOND trademark issue impacting the same brand name!

So, as you may recall, the Suits alum got into big trouble with an NYC-based family-owned clothing company when she tried to pull the trigger on updating her lifestyle brand’s name from American Riviera Orchard to “As Ever”. That small business cried foul, and the whole thing turned into a big dust-up. …Which was actually the second big hurdle Prince Harry’s wife faced with this rebrand after first being accused of swiping her company’s new logo from a Spanish town’s coat of arms! Wild.

But buckle up, y’all, because there’s a third issue at play, too. According to DailyMail.com, which obtained documents this past weekend from the US Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO), the Duchess of Sussex actually did try to begin selling products under the “As Ever” name back in 2022, as she has previously claimed. But she ran into trouble a few months after pushing for a trademark back then… because a Chinese clothing company already owned the name! Oops!

…

Here’s the thing, though: Meghan likely can’t EVER sell any clothing under the “As Ever” brand.

An unnamed El Lay-based trademark lawyer said this to the DM about it on Sunday night:

“If she sells clothing under the As Ever brand she risks being sued.”

Yeah. Ever.

- Meghan Markle’s Newly Rebranded ‘As Ever’ Is Already BANNED From Selling Clothing! Ever! PerezHilton.com, February 25, 2025.

3. Just one month after Tesla CEO Elon Musk announced he was taking a break from politics to focus on his businesses, he retook center stage in Washington, going on the attack once again this week over Trump’s budget bill that was signed into law Friday. Trump countered with a threat to pull the government contracts held by Musk’s companies and even hinted at deporting the world’s richest man from the U.S. This time, though, the stakes could be a lot higher than the pride of the billionaires.

The squabble underlined the still-simmering tension between Trump and his former “First Buddy” – and could set the stage for a much larger showdown in 2026 and perhaps 2028.

After calling the legislation a “disgusting abomination” on social media in early June (and making several accusations against Trump personally), Musk waded back into political waters Monday, calling the bill “utterly insane and destructive” and vowing to unseat Congressional leaders who voted in favor of the so-called big beautiful bill, which will raise the debt ceiling by $5 trillion.

“Every member of Congress who campaigned on reducing government spending and then immediately voted for the biggest debt increase in history should hang their head in shame!” Musk wrote. “And they will lose their primary next year if it is the last thing I do on this Earth.”

Things, of course, escalated quickly. Musk took things to the next level later, saying if the bill passes, he would launch a third political party immediately. “If this insane spending bill passes, the America Party will be formed the next day,” he posted on X.

Trump threatened to end government contracts with Musk’s businesses, and when asked if he would deport Musk, he said “I don’t know. We’ll have to take a look.”

Following Trump’s threats, Musk bit his tongue, writing on X, “So tempting to escalate this. So, so tempting. But I will refrain for now.”

The two continued to growl at each other over social media throughout the day and into early Wednesday morning, but without the teeth they bared earlier in the day.

Friday, as the nation celebrated the Fourth of July, Musk refrained from any further direct attack on Trump, but continued to signal boost the possibility of the America Party, as well as retweeting posts that were opposed to the budget bill. He also launched a new poll asking whether “we should create the America Party,” which got over 750,000 votes, with roughly two-thirds of his followers voting yes.

The latest dust up between Musk and Trump came less than two weeks after Musk told YCombinator’s AI Startup School that he had been frustrated by the political process.

“Fixing the government is kind of like, the beach is dirty and there’s some needles and feces and, like, trash and you want to clean up the beach,” he said. “But then there’s also this thousand-foot wall of water which is a tsunami of AI. And how much does cleaning the beach really matter if you’ve got a thousand-foot tsunami about to hit? Not that much.… It’s just so much noise. The signal to noise ratio in politics is terrible.”

- Elon Musk and Trump’s Feud Has Escalated to Vague Deportation Threats, Inc.com, July 25, 2025.

本文仅代表作者本人观点，与本网立场无关。欢迎大家讨论学术问题，尊重他人，禁止人身攻击和发布一切违反国家现行法律法规的内容。

About the author:

Zhang Xin is Trainer at chinadaily.com.cn. He has been with China Daily since 1988, when he graduated from Beijing Foreign Studies University. Write him at: zhangxin@chinadaily.com.cn, or raise a question for potential use in a future column.

（作者：张欣）