Copper has surged to an all-time high on the London Metal Exchange, with three-month futures touching $14,617 a ton this week — eclipsing the previous record set in January — as fears of new U.S. tariffs on refined metal collide with a genuine supply squeeze at mines from Chile to Indonesia.
LME futures gained as much as 0.8% to $14,533 a ton before settling near $14,513, part of a rally that has pushed copper up roughly 17% over the past year, according to market data reviewed this week. Traders have rushed hundreds of thousands of tons of metal into the United States ahead of a possible tariff on refined copper imports, a wave large enough to distort global trade flows: U.S. imports of refined copper cathode hit nearly 885,000 tons in the first half of the year, more than double the volume over the same period in 2024, while Comex warehouse stockpiles have grown for 46 straight days to a record 675,185 metric tons.
A surplus that isn't one
The reshuffling has emptied out metal available to the rest of the world even though global inventories, in aggregate, remain elevated. CRU Group's principal copper analyst, Robert Edwards, told Reuters that the tariff threat has turned what should have been a global surplus into "at best a balanced market" once U.S.-bound metal is excluded — and warned the picture could darken further.
If imports keep coming in as they have been, then it's going to look like a deficit market in reality.
Robert Edwards, principal copper analyst, CRU Group
Real mine supply problems are compounding the tariff-driven distortion. Global copper mine output fell 1.1% in the first half of the year, and Chile's copper shipments sank to a one-year low in August despite the record prices, hit by winter storms and operational setbacks. A Chinese halt to sulfuric acid exports — which had supplied roughly 37% of Chile's imports of the chemical — has squeezed the leaching operations that Codelco and other producers rely on. Indonesia's Grasberg complex, run by Freeport-McMoRan, is still recovering from a 2025 mudslide and is expected to run at only about 65% of capacity through the back half of this year.
Longer term, miners are struggling to keep pace with demand growth from data centers, renewable-energy buildout and power-grid upgrades, a mismatch that has boosted profits at Rio Tinto, BHP, Glencore and Zijin Mining even as it squeezes manufacturers paying record input costs. Glencore chief executive Gary Nagle has argued that a definitive tariff decision from Washington — whichever way it falls — would help cool the market simply by resolving the uncertainty driving the stockpiling. Until the Commerce Department rules, traders expect the volatility, and the premium U.S. buyers are paying over the rest of the world, to persist.
