'Biggest tax rise in history': Trump gets brutal coverage in conservative newspaper

The Telegraph, one of the most conservative newspapers in the United Kingdom, has published a scathing editorial from columnist Matthew Lynn that accuses President Donald Trump of leveling "the biggest tax rise in global history."

In his piece, Lynn makes the case that Trump's second term has gotten off to a much worse start than his first, which Lynn noted was marked primarily by traditional Republican policies of tax cuts and deregulation.

Now, he contends, Trump is putting his full weight behind tariffs aimed at America's own largest trading partners that will harm consumers.

"By far most likely ... is that much of the increased cost will be passed onto consumers in the form of higher prices," he writes. "Either they will be forced to pay more for imported goods, or prices may rise in general because U.S. companies have less of an incentive to improve productivity thanks to the protections afforded by that tariff wall. And if tariffs do raise $600 billion annually, that is no small sum of money, even for an enormous economy like the United States."

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Lynn argues that the situation could grow even worse for the United States if Trump really tries to go through with his idea of using tariffs to replace the income tax.

"Even if we assume that Elon Musk manages to cut $1 trillion or more out of the budget, the tariffs would have to be at least five or six times larger than anything yet proposed to cover Washington’s annual expenditure," he notes. "They would need to be at least 100 percent and possibly more simply to replace the federal incomes tax. Tariffs at that rate would be off-the-scale, and would do huge damage to the global trading system. At risk of stating the obvious, if trade collapses to zero because of tariffs, then tariff revenue would also be zero."

He also finds it troubling that Trump is going to enact these large tax hikes before even settling on any potential offsets in tax cuts in other areas to ease the pain for consumers and businesses.

"So Trump is about to impose a huge tax rise, and the blunt truth is that like any other tax rise it will crush the American economy," he concludes.