What happened was England was turning a blind eye towards smuggling into and out of the American colonies because it cost more to try and enforce taxes.

Eventually England did seize a bunch of smuggled tea, diverted it to England to be taxed as a matter of principle, which made smuggled tea more expensive than legal tea.

So the smugglers dumped the legal tea into the harbor, driving it’s price up and allowing the smugglers to sell at a high enough price they could stay in operation.

They 100% knew they were driving up the price of tea and negatively effecting their communities…

They just liked money more.

It wasn’t a protest, it was economical warfare that only helped the rich smugglers and fucked everyone else over.

It makes sense the average American didn’t know better back then, but it’s 2024, there’s zero excuse not to know this shit.