Nicaraguan cigars enjoy a good reputation worldwide, but a proposal before US legislators to increase the tax on cigar imports has local producers in an uproar. The current tax is 4.5 cents on each “premium” cigar, but the new levy would raise it up to $10. This, naturally, would result in a drop in sales in the USA and affect the livelihoods of the 100,000 Nicaraguans directly involved in cigar production.

Despite anti-smoking campaigns in the land of Uncle Sam, it still imports about 310 million cigars yearly, 56 million from Nicaragua. Looked at from the other side, it is the destination of 69% of the country’s puros. Representatives of local tobacco growers and cigar manufacturers claim that this tax violates the spirit and letter of the free trade treaty signed last year between the United States and the countries of Central America, along with the Dominican Republic. US ambassador Paul Trivelli hinted that George W. Bush would probably veto the new tax law in the event it is approved by his country’s Congress and Senate.