The Tea Act 1773 (13 Geo. 3. c. 44) was an Act of the Parliament of Great Britain. The principal objective was to reduce the massive amount of tea held by the financially troubled British East India Company in its London warehouses and to help the struggling company survive.[1] A related objective was to undercut the price of illegal tea, smuggled into Britain's North American colonies. This was supposed to convince the colonists to purchase Company tea on which the Townshend duties were paid, thus implicitly agreeing to accept Parliament's right of taxation. Smuggled tea was a large issue for Britain and the East India Company, since approximately 86% of all the tea in America at the time was smuggled Dutch tea.

The Act granted the Company the right to directly ship its tea to North America and the right to the duty-free export of tea from Britain, although the tax (aka tariff) imposed by the Townshend Acts and collected in the colonies remained in force. It received the royal assent on May 10, 1773.

[A little context: Tariffs were a form of taxation used by many countries until the 20th Century. It was much easier to collect import duties at a limited number of ports or border crossings than to measure manufacturing, distribution or consumption. Modern taxes on wealth and income have accompanied the growth of modern communications and data management and are a more precise method of managing modern economies.]

Colonists in the Thirteen Colonies recognized the implications of the Act's provisions, and a coalition of merchants, smugglers, and artisans similar to that which had opposed the Stamp Act 1765 mobilized opposition to the delivery and distribution of the tea. The company's authorised consignees were harassed, and in many colonies, successful efforts were made to prevent the tea from being landed. In Boston, this resistance culminated in the Boston Tea Party on December 16, 1773, when colonists (some disguised as Native Americans) boarded tea ships anchored in the harbour and dumped their tea cargo overboard. Parliamentary reaction to this event included the passage of the Coercive Acts, designed to punish Massachusetts for its resistance, and the appointment of General Thomas Gage as royal governor of Massachusetts. These actions further raised tensions that led to the eruption of the American War of Independence in April 1775.

[1]Wikipedia et al.

The Trump Terrifies Transnational Traders Act (proposed, 2025) is a new tax system to be introduced in Congress by the Republican Party in January, 2025. Its objective is to reduce the inventories of American manufacturing industries, whose products are maladapted to the 21st Century and are piling up across the nation, especially in regions of the so-called Rust Belt, which combined with the Old South with its underpaid workforce, is also the Grand Old Party's political base. Under the Act, tariffs would be added to the price of agricultural, extracted and manufactured goods of most types imported from other countries. Foreign trade is a major issue in the USA, since the trade deficit has been increasing steadily in recent decades despite periods of trade advantage.

The Act would force importers to pay a tax (called a tariff to disguise its nature) on goods brought to the USA. Importers will of course pass this added cost on to consumers, or in the case of raw materials to manufacturers. Depending on the rate of taxation, the final price of these goods would then make locally produced goods seem cheaper and cause consumers to buy local. The GOP and Donald Trump are promoting this as a tax on foreign producers and/or countries. IT IS NOT.

Although foreign countries and their industries might see reductions in sales to the USA, the States make up only about 4% of the world population, and in order to recoup their losses while sustaining local economies, foreign producers would probably sell their goods more cheaply in other countries. This would cause US residents to pay the highest prices in the world for any given commodity or product.

Voters in the USA will most likely see through the ruse tendered by the GOP. There are several ways to respond, some legal, some not. Manufacturers could relabel or mislabel the content of their products. Smugglers could import disguised products, and distributors could embed foreign content invisibly in more complex goods. Given the recent proclivity of GOP leaders to prefer the stick over the carrot as a means of implementing policy, it is likely that there would be an increasing level of coercion for any resistance, such as the imposition of criminal penalties for ordinary market choices by the citizenry not favoring US producers.

Alternatively, the citizens could simply vote No on Tariffs November 5 by choosing Kamala Harris as president and sending Democrats to Congress. Much easier.