Tagged: economic history
Article · Trade & Tariffs
The Tea Trade Fought to Keep America's Border Tea Tasters
From 1897 to 1996 the US sampled every lot of imported tea against a federal standard. The trade lobbied to keep it, and paid the meeting expenses of the board that recommended the standard.
Article · Markets & Prices
The Tax Cut That Accidentally Lowered England's Death Rate
A 1784 law meant only to defeat tea smugglers pushed boiled water into English households at scale, and the parish records show a real, measurable drop in mortality that nobody who wrote the law intended or noticed.