J.C. Newman, one of the oldest US cigar manufacturers wants to start using Cuban tobacco in its cigars and petitioned the US government for the rights to do so. Due to the controversial 60-year embargo against its neighboring country of Cuba, the US bans imports of cigars, tobacco, and most other products from Cuba.
Drew Newman, general counsel of Tampa, Florida-based J.C. Newman asked State Department in mid-June to add tobacco to the list of Cuban goods that may be legally imported. Newman cites the easing up of restrictions on imports from Cuba started during the Obama period. Although, during the Trump period this policy was revered, imports of Cuba coffee and charcoal are still allowed. Nestle’s Nespresso began selling Cuban coffee in the U.S. in 2016.
Lifting embargoes on products from Cuba is a highly complicated process. There apparently is no process to applying for such an exemption of products from an embargoed country so it is unclear what the petition to the state department by J.C. Newman will yield. Also, the US allows its citizens who claim they had their land in Cuba nationalized to sue companies that now profit from the property. So anyone doing business with Cuba must be certain a Cuban partner’s firm does not fall into that category.
At its peak in the early 1900s, Tampa had more than 150 factories producing more than 500 million hand-rolled stogies, primarily using Cuban tobacco. Eric Newman, another J.C. Newman spokesperson says that when President John F. Kennedy announced the Cuban economic embargo in 1962, it was “the beginning of the end of the Tampa cigar industry as we know it.”