Report: Cigar Imports Remain Steady Through August 2023

The U.S. imported 46.6 million premium cigars in August, according to a new report from the Cigar Association of America (CAA), an industry trade group. That represents a 3.5 percent drop compared to 2022.

Those numbers are in line with premium cigars imports for 2023 as a whole: very good, but slightly down compared to the record number set in 2022.

Through August 2023, the CAA estimates that the U.S. has imported 298.37 million premium cigars, a 3.2 percent drop compared to the same period last year.

Nicaragua has supplied 162.1 million of those cigars, around 54 percent of total imports to the U.S. Nicaragua (-2.8 percent) and Honduras (-15.2 percent) are down compared to 2023, but the Dominican Republic—the second largest exporter of premium cigars to the U.S.—is actually up 3.5 percent.

According to the CAA, in the final four months of 2022, the U.S. imported between 39-41 million premium cigars per month.

CAA calculates these numbers based on both the import numbers provided by the U.S. Census Bureau, U.S. Customs Services and information from cigar companies themselves. The trade group’s numbers are not exact because of reporting differences; it estimates how many “large cigars” were actually “premium cigars.” The differences between the two are that there are some machine-made cigars that meet the U.S. definition of a “large cigar,” though those cigars would not be considered premium cigars by most people.