Copper price rises as dollar impact outweighs tariff nervousness
Copper rose as a weakening dollar made commodities cheaper for many buyers, while tariff-induced fears around global growth kept gains in check.
The mood in financial markets remained nervous after President Donald Trump kicked off a tariff war and continued to cut spending while shaking up decades-old geopolitical relationships. Tariffs of 25% on all US aluminum and steel imports will take effect Wednesday. On Tuesday, Trump said he’d double those levies on shipments coming from Canada before quickly reconsidering.
American manufacturers are already paying much higher prices for aluminum, steel and copper than rival plants overseas — a trend that’s sapping business confidence and stoking worries about inflation even before tariffs kick in.
Goldman Sachs analysts including Eoin Dinsmore expect a 25% tariff on copper imports into the US by the end of this year after Trump ordered a 232 investigation into potential tariffs on national security grounds.
“We forecast the higher US price before actual tariff imposition to result in a 50-100% increase in US copper net imports in the coming months, and a 200,000-300,000-ton rise in US copper inventories by the end of” the third quarter, the analysts said in a note on March 11.
In China, copper cathode inventories in Shanghai and Guangdong extended declines from a peak due to fewer imports, Shanghai Metals Markets said in a note. Major domestic copper rod producers cut run rates last week, even during the traditional peak demand season, after elevated prices suppressed new orders, according to the note.
In a further sign of tepid demand in Asia’s largest economy and the world’s biggest consumer of metals, local copper smelters are shipping the metal abroad to take profits from higher global prices.
In other metal markets, zinc rallied by as much as 2.2% after a spike in orders to withdraw metal from warehouses tracked by the London Metal Exchange.
Copper rose 1.4% to settle at $9,662.50 a ton as of 5:51 p.m. local time. Aluminum climbed 0.3%.
Read More: Morgan Stanley sees upside for copper prices amid potential US tariffs
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3 Comments
John Guba
So, proud because am interested in doing scrap business, I intend to sell out the dirty copper to be recycled
Kurt guntheroth
The US copper scrap business is such a rippoff of the scrappers. The scrap dealers will pay you a lower price if there is verdigris, copper corrosion or tarnish on your copper scrap as opposed to shiny new looking copper. But this corrosion does not add any extra weight to amount to very much as in fractions of an ounce, to the scrap . But yet they will dock you for it. Ultimately all of the scrap both dark and shiny goes into the same melting pot at the refinery. So it’s just a racket and a scheme to pay the scrapper a lower price for non-shiny imperfect colored copper.And a thin near weightless patina is no reason to reduce the price of copper scrap. There needs to be a change at all levels of the scrap industry in regards to this injustice.The rules or pricing methods are fundamentally wrong!
Paul Jeannides
Find another buyer. Scrap dealers, will ask you, to except less, by a made up, false, quality issue. Your copper, their false excuses. Scrappies, who won’t buy at the market price, either don’t have confidence in the higher price ask today. So it’s and excuse. Wait 2 weeks. If you can. They will either, hold their current buy excuse, pay market, pay more, or pay less, or pass on all offers, until confidence, changes with prices going up. Or they won’t have any copper to sell to their customers. The market will settle into a more or less, confidence, in this big transition. Unprecedented, to say the least.