Copper Market Turmoil Amid Trump's Touting 50% Tariff

Bloomberg

09-07-2025

Live on Bloomberg TV
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00:00Anson, how big a moment is this then, in the metal market that you have covered for a number of years? Of course. It's a very big moment. I think Jill, who was speaking earlier, is absolutely right. This 50% tariff on copper was well telegraphed. Trump's been talking about putting levies on imports of copper since February. He said he wants to bring copper home. Make of that what you will. But the 50% level is what is the surprise here. The market was really pricing in and analysts were broadly expecting a 25% tariff. So this is significantly higher than expected and it's really got people on the back foot in terms of scrambling to understand what's what's going to happen next. And the reason why 50% is considered very high is because is because the US is actually particularly reliant on imports for its manufacturing industries, more so than in far more so than in steel, for example. So it is going to leave certain pockets of manufacturing potentially in the US, potentially facing much higher costs for the copper market in the interim. We've seen that kind of flare up in the spread of the US price over the global London metal exchange price that went up to a record of 25%. The US market is is reasonably well supplied in the short term because traders have been sending a lot of metal to the US in recent months ahead of tariffs. That trade is now closed. So there's copper in the US which kind of soften the impact in the in the immediate term. But in the long run I think people are asking, you know, where's this US copper going to come from? And on that point, Martin, you talked about the inventory build up in the US as as traders kind of foresaw potential tariffs, copper prices then hitting hitting a new record yesterday. In terms of the pricing in the session yesterday, what analysts telling you about where that where that pricing story go goes from here. If these if these tariffs of 50% are, in fact, implemented. We've seen the immediate impact in the US with, you know, the price spiking. I think what's interesting is that their their meat prices actually come down a little bit. That really speaks to the idea there's going to be a little bit less pressure and the rest of the global market, if major producers have to divert metal away from away from America in the in the U.S.. There was an interesting point from from Macquarie in one of their comments this morning saying that, you know, 50% is a level where it starts to become demand destructive in the US, you know, is going to put off buyers of copper containing goods if manufacturers try and pass on those those costs. So you might see it as actually bearish to some extent even for the US prices in the next few months.