Tampa

Tampa exists because a Spanish cigar maker needed to escape both Cuban revolutionaries and Cuban import tariffs. In 1885, Vicente Martinez Ybor—born in Spain, trained in Havana, exiled to Key West—discovered that Tampa's humid climate preserved tobacco perfectly, Henry Plant's new railroad could ship product north, and the deep-water port could receive Cuban leaf. He bought 40 acres northeast of what was then a fishing village of fewer than 1,000 people.

What Ybor built was not just a factory but a designed industrial ecosystem. He constructed hundreds of worker homes around a massive three-story cigar works—the world's largest at the time. Cuban, Spanish, and Italian immigrants followed the jobs, bringing languages, food, and politics. The factories employed 'lectors' who read newspapers and novels aloud while workers rolled cigars, turning the production floor into an informal university. By 1929, Ybor City was 'the cigar capital of the world,' producing 500 million hand-rolled cigars annually.

The Depression and machine-rolling killed Ybor's industry, but Tampa's port survived. Florida's largest seaport now generates $34.6 billion in annual economic impact and supports 192,000 jobs. Container volume has grown 28% annually over five years as companies shift supply chains from Asia to Latin America. A channel-deepening project and new terminal will push capacity toward 1 million TEUs. The region hosts 550 million square feet of distribution center space—the state's largest concentration.

Tampa's pattern is immigration arbitrage: bring foreign skills to American soil, avoid foreign tariffs, build infrastructure that outlasts the original industry. The cigar factories are now restaurants and breweries, but the port that received Cuban tobacco now receives Colombian coffee and Brazilian goods. By 2026, Tampa bets on Latin American nearshoring the way Ybor bet on Cuban tobacco—same logic, different commodity.