Premium Cigar Imports Decreased 8.3 Percent in 2019

The number of premium cigars imported to the U.S. was significantly down in 2019,

Data from both the government and the Cigar Association of America (CAA), an industry trade group, show that the number of large or premium cigar imports declined. The extent of the drop depends on how the numbers are evaluated. The government data in its purest form indicates an 8.28 percent drop in the number of cigars imported that were valued at 23 cents or more. CAA, as is explained below, estimates the drop for premium cigars was slightly softer, down 7.1 percent compared to 2018.

Large Cigar Import Data

Year	Total	JAN	FEB	MAR	APR	MAY	JUN	JUL	AUG	SEP	OCT	NOV	DEC
2017	351.011	13.345	26.356	32.33	26.055	31.162	31.926	31.642	33.979	28.263	32.35	34.357	29.246
2018	386.268	19.044	28.291	29.71	31.528	35.153	35.572	36.378	36.544	32.91	37.379	31.868	31.891
2019	356.723	17.14	29.8	29.618	29.292	32.847	30.99	35.359	30.491	28.345	33.122	29.822	29.897
Change	-8.29 percent	-11.11 percent	5.06 percent	-0.31 percent	-7.63 percent	-7.02 percent	-14.79 percent	-2.88 percent	-19.85 percent	-16.11 percent	-12.85 percent	-6.86 percent	-6.67 percent

Numbers in millions.
Data via Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau, large cigars imported to the U.S. valued at 23 cents or more.

The Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau (TTB) indicated that the number of large cigars that were imported at a value of 23 cents or more was 356.72 million in 2019, down from 386.27 million in 2018. Notably, Q1—historically weakest quarter of imports—saw an essentially flat change in imports, whereas the remaining quarters were down 7 percent, 11 percent and 8.2 percent respectively.

CAA takes the government’s data and then uses its members to help estimate the number of premium cigars by adjusting the import numbers from the Dominican Republic, which also produces billions of machine-made and cheaper cigars. The group estimated that of the Dominican Republic’s 122.02 million large cigars valued at 23 cents or more, roughly 16 million would not be considered premium, creating an estimate of 106.23 million premium cigars from the Dominican Republic in 2019. It does not make this adjustment for any other country and many Dominican cigarmakers are irked by the CAA’s adjustments.

Those numbers would suggest that imports of premium cigars dropped by 24.2 million units with the steepest declines coming from the Dominican Republic and Honduras, while Nicaragua was relatively flat.

Premium Cigar Import Numbers by Country (Cigar Association of America)

Country	2015	2016	2017	2018	2019	Change
Bahamas	29	19	25	23	41	43.90 percent
Costa Rica	250	223	340	379	391	3.07 percent
Dominican Republic	126,123	115,621	118,461	118,191	106,230	-11.25 percent
Honduras	67,626	71,270	61,771	69,653	60,293	-15.52 percent
Mexico	286	348	177	143	129	-10.85 percent
Nicaragua	119,961	134,359	148,292	172,616	169,353	-1.92 percent
Panama		24	133
Philippines	1,005	449	863	935	1,281	27.01 percent
Total	315,280	322,313	330,062	361,940	337,718

All numbers in thousands.
Data via the Cigar Association of America, based on data from the U. S. Census Bureau, Imports of Merchandise for Consumption, IM-146, which is based on data of the U. S. Customs Service.
The Cigar Association of America modifies the number of Dominican cigar imports to help to create what it calls a "pure premium" number based on data from its member companies.

Regardless—as many people within the cigar industry witnessed in 2019—the industry was unable to beat its record 2018 in terms of premium cigar imports, likely the first time the numbers have decreased in over a decade. Per the CAA, the declines seem to be limited to just the higher-end cigars as both the overall large cigar number—which includes both premium cigars and others—and the little cigar import numbers were up compared to 2018.

The TTB has published its January import numbers and indicated that there were 14.88 million cigars valued at 23 cents or more imported in that month, down from 17.14 million in 2019 and 19.04 million in 2018.