When President Kennedy embargoed imports from Fidel Castro's Cuba last month, the Tampa cigar makers, who roll 97% of the 693 million Havanas puffed each year in the U.S., faced going out of business. Most of the 4,800 Florida cigar workers and their bosses grudgingly accepted the ban as a necessary means of choking off Castro's dollar supplies. Now that Washington has approved a legal way around the embargo, Tampa cigarmen are wondering out loud whether their industry is being uselessly sacrificed. As explained by the Treasury Department, the embargo is powerless to prevent...
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