Molasses Act taxes imports (early trade restriction)

In 1733, Parliament passed the Molasses Act to tax molasses, sugar, and rum imported from non-British Caribbean colonies into British North America. The law responded to lobbying from British West Indian planters who wanted protection against French and Dutch competition in the Atlantic trade. Merchants in Boston, Newport, and other seaports quickly looked for ways to evade the duties.

The Molasses Act intensified an economic conflict inside the British Empire between mercantilist protection and the commercial habits of mainland colonists. New England merchants depended on foreign molasses for the rum trade, while Parliament tried to direct colonial commerce toward British islands through statute. The weak enforcement of the 1733 law also revealed how difficult it was for imperial officials to regulate colonial trade without a larger customs apparatus.

Parliament's later Sugar Act of 1764 revived the molasses issue with stricter enforcement and helped turn a trade dispute into a constitutional controversy. The Molasses Act therefore foreshadowed the imperial revenue policies that colonial merchants would resist more openly after the Seven Years' War.