In 1773, America was a group of British colonies along the eastern coast of what is now the USA. The British East India Company was a huge trading firm in decline that needed help from the British government to sell its huge tea stocks. The solution was to sell it to America.
The British Government passed the Tea Act, which allowed the company to ship its tea duty-free to its agents in America, who would pay a token tax before selling it on cheaply to the colonists. However, local people (and other British tea merchants) saw this as blatant favouritism and unfair trade. It also came on top of the previous Stamp Act of 1765, which had tried to raise taxes on a range of everyday items (including tea) from the colonies to pay for the vast debts caused by Britain's wars in India and France.
Samuel Adams formed a society called The Sons of Liberty to stop the tea landing. They crept to the harbour on the night of December 16, 1773, with blackened faces and threw the newly arrived tea chests into the harbour, where the salt water spoiled it. Other cities along the coast followed suit and this became one of the sparks that ignited the War of Independence.
Tea became associated with imperial control as a result, and Americans began to drink coffee to make a patriotic stand. Tea was George Washington's favoured drink, but things are very different today. This why we called our business The Boston Tea Party - this event was the turning point for both tea and coffee in different ways and without it, the USA would be a nation of tea drinkers today.