Don’t know which way is up?

Reader question:

Please explain “which way is up” in this passage:

“One minute Donald Trump and his people say one thing, then the opposite, then they say something else entirely. Nobody ever seems to know which way is up, and many of them just lie outright to the American people.”

My comments:

The American idiom in question is: Don’t know which way is up.

In our example passage, Donald Trump and his people lie so much – saying one thing one day and saying something entirely different the next – that the public is greatly confused. They don’t know which words to listen to, which way to follow.

In other words, there’s a great deal of confusion and the people feel as if they’ve lost their way.

As if they’ve lost their sense of direction entirely.

Literally, when Americans lose their sense of direction, they say they don’t know which way is up. It is similar to what we say in China: I don’t know which way is north.

In America, apparently, to know which way is up (instead of north) has a lot of practical advantages. For starters, packagers always know which way is up when they put bottles and other items into boxes ready for transport.

Take packages for liquid bottles, for example, there’s always a sign found on the package reading: “This side up”.

Lest, of course, there be leaks on the way.

Hence, figuratively, people say they don’t know which way is up when they’ve lost control of a situation, a situation in which there is a great deal of confusion and chaos.

Such as the situation facing Americans right now in the second Trump administration.

We can say the same about the first Trump administration, of course, but there is really no need to pile it on.

Anyways, here are media examples of people who no longer know “which way is up”:

1. Gwyneth Paltrow is globally recognized for her portrayal of Pepper Potts in the Marvel Cinematic Universe films. But before she was exposed to this much stardom, she gained attention in Hollywood due to her performance as Viola de Lesseps in the 1998 film, Shakespeare in Love.

Due to her portrayal, she even bagged the Academy Award for Best Actress. However, her tremendous win at the age of 26 wasn’t much liked by the industry.

The 50-year-old actress, Gwyneth Paltrow in a recent interview on the Call Her Daddy Podcast shared her opinions on the major Oscar win for Shakespeare in Love.

She was 26 years old at the time of her win, which only brought her a moment of happiness, as what she faced afterwards was much more overwhelming for her. She said: “Once I won the Oscar, it put me into a bit of an identity crisis, because if you win the biggest prize, like what are you supposed to do? And where are you supposed to go?”

She continued:

“It was hard the amount of attention that you receive on a night like that and the weeks following, it’s so disorienting. And frankly, really unhealthy. I was like, ‘This is crazy. I don’t know what to do, I don’t know which way is up.’ It was a lot. Not that I would give it back or anything, it was an amazing experience, but it kind of called a lot of things into question for me.”

- Gwyneth Paltrow Claims Hollywood Turned Against Her After Winning Oscar at 26 for Shocking Academy Awards Upset, FandomWire.com, May 5, 2023.

2. For Valentine’s Day this year, the owner of Dora’s Donuts will be showing up in her sprinkle headband and donut shirt to deliver boxes of freshly baked donuts, Dough Notes, and hope.

The Dough Notes are small edible messages. Signature phrases include Do Not Worry or Good Things Are Coming Your Way, but for Valentine’s Day, owner Heather Dora Piotter said she’ll be creating custom notes and conversation heart messages, too.

“I’m trying to add a little positivity. That stems back to my late husband,” owner Heather Dora Piotter said. “He was really happy go lucky. He could make friends with a brick wall. So, when he passed I was like, ‘You don’t get to take all of that with you.’ People are already happy to get hot fresh donuts and so to add a little extra positivity and something a little funny just felt like part of us.”

Piotter’s husband was named Jeffery, but he went by “JJ.”

Most of Piotter’s life she has worked in the food business, including as a chef at Google. She loved making donuts at another Milan staple, Wasem Fruit Farm, so much she decided she wanted to start her own donut business.

“[JJ] was just like I know you can do it,” she recalls, adding, “We met through mutual friends just back in 2013 and just knew we were each other’s person. He was whole heartedly behind all of the donut things.”

Piotter started Dora’s Donuts in February of 2023 at her then-home in Milan under cottage law. Her husband was killed by a drunk driver just 10 days later.

“I was like, ‘Whoa, this is done.’ I barely knew which way is up. So, I was like, ‘This is not an option to continue.’”

However, Piotter said the Milan community where she had been testing her business ideas online got behind her.

“Most of the Milan community was like, ‘Absolutely not. We will be here. We’re still here for you and for the donuts no matter how long it takes.’ It was really special.”

That promise drew Piotter forward.

- A Different Kind of Love Story: Dora’s Donuts Delivers Hope, by Karen Lambert, TheSunTimesNews.com, February 7, 2026.

3. Groundhog Day’s furry forecaster Punxsutawney Phil predicted six more weeks of wintry weather. What if we asked Phil to apply his insights to the frigid job market? He might answer the way an alarmed groundhog does, with chattering teeth, and then squeak, “Wheet! Wheet! Cold days are coming for American jobseekers, and they’ll last a lot longer than six weeks.”

Economists are using the term “deep freeze” to describe the current job outlook. These are strange times. The official unemployment rate of 4.45 percent is not a distressing number, but the reasons behind it are worrisome. Many workers are sticking with their jobs, fearful they can’t find a new one.

Aside from some big-headline layoffs, most employers figure business is good enough to hang on to the staff they’ve got, but not strong enough to take new people on. The main reason: They have no idea what exactly is going on in the American economy.

Is it fair to pin this unsettling situation on Donald Trump? Sure, it’s fair, though he doesn’t deserve all the blame. What he does, reliably, is make a lot of problems worse.

Start with the tariffs. His trade war – slapping higher duties on essentially the rest of the world – was sold as a job-creation engine. It hasn’t worked out that way. Since “Liberation Day,” April 2, 2025, U.S. factory employment has fallen month after month. And last year, the number of job openings dropped by nearly a million.

What tariffs have done is push up prices that Americans pay for food and other everyday goods. In other words, they add to inflation. Prices haven’t spiked as dramatically as some warned, but they’ve risen enough to leave consumers uneasy and on edge.

American companies that obtain parts and materials from abroad are now paying more for them. Some have swallowed at least some of those added costs, but much of the tariff tax gets passed onto buyers. Many companies say they will now have to pass more of those costs to consumers.

Such disruptions have hit Main Street businesses especially hard. They are less able than big corporations to deal with the confusion over tariffs. Who is meant to foot the bill? Vendors? Purchasers? Shoppers? Small companies employ almost half the American workforce.

Then there’s the immigration crisis. Roundups of undocumented aliens were supposed to free up jobs for Americans. But Trump’s spectacle of ICE agents sweeping up the foreign-born has created a mess for local businesses. Both legal and illegal immigrants are afraid to go to work and shop at stores. Immigrants, after all, are also customers.

…

Businesses don’t know which way is up, down or sideways, and Trump’s daily dose of chaos isn’t helping. The mystery of what will come next leaves many companies hesitant to hire.

Winter is settling in the job market. If you’re feeling insecure, you may be on to something.

- Feeling Insecure At Work? That Fear Is Real – And You Can Blame Trump, NationalMemo.com, February 10, 2026.

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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）