Congress refused to pass the excise tax, but James Madison successfully steered the tariff increases through the legislature.
The Act Laying Duties on Imports was communicated by Alexander Hamilton to the United States House of Representatives on April 23, 1790.
In order to promote manufacturing in the United States, Hamilton proposed that imported goods be more expensive, which would force Americans to buy more homemade products.
All goods, wares and merchandise imported directly from China or India in ships or vessels not of the United States, teas excepted, twelve and a half per centum ad valorem.
All coaches, chariots, phaetons, chaises, chairs, solos or other carriages, or parts of carriages, fifteen and a half per centum ad valorem; and five per centum ad valorem upon all other goods, wares, and merchandise, except bullion, tin in pigs, tin plates, old pewter, brass teutenague, iron and brass wire, copper in plates, saltpetre, plaster of Paris, wool, dyeing woods, and dyeing drugs, raw hides and skins, undressed furs of every kind, the sea stores of ships and vessels, the clothes, books, household furniture, and the tools or implements of the trade or profession of persons who come to reside in the United States, philosophical apparatus, specially imported for any seminary of learning, all goods intended to be re-exported to a foreign port or place, in the same ship or vessel in which they shall be imported, and generally, all articles of the growth, product or manufactures of the United States.
And be it furthered enacted, That an addition of ten per centum shall be made to the several rates of duties specified and imposed, in respect to all goods, wares and merchandise, which, after the said last day of December next, shall be imported in ships or vessels not of the United States, except in the cases in which an additional duty is herein before specially laid on any goods, wares, or merchandises, which shall be imported in such ships or vessels.