Report: Premium Cigar Imports Remain High in Q1 2024

In the first quarter of 2024, the U.S. imported roughly 97 million premium cigars. This is in line with import levels during Q1 for the previous three years, which have ranged between 95.5-104.7 million cigars.

This data comes from the Cigar Association of America (CAA), an industry trade group that compiles reports about U.S. cigar imports using data from the government and cigar companies.

Nicaragua remains the dominant supplier of premium cigars to the U.S., with 54.84 million of the 96.95 million cigars, 56.5 percent of the total. For context, last year, Nicaragua accounted for 53.3 percent of total imports. The Q1 2024 data also shows a continuation of trends established last year: the Dominican Republic is increasing its premium cigar exports to the U.S., while Nicaragua is slightly declining, and Honduras is experiencing double-digit declines.

The Q1 2024 data also shows that cigar imports continue to be much higher than their pre-COVID-19 levels. The CAA says that imports in the first quarter were up 47 percent compared to Q1 2020. Last year, the U.S. imported 467.57 million premium cigars—a record—according to CAA.

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 difference between the two is 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.