Germany urges Europe to stop China buying so much copper scrap

Europe needs to help its copper smelters by stemming “huge” flows of scrap metal to China, Germany’s Economy Minister Katherina Reiche said, potentially opening up a new front in trade tensions.

“The Chinese are buying copper scrap from the market in huge quantities,” Reiche said at a Siemens Energy AG event in Berlin on Monday. “Large German copper smelters are no longer getting any raw materials.”

The unease about shipping raw materials to China highlights a growing politicization of global commodities supplies, which has accelerated under US President Donald Trump’s protectionist agenda. Any European Union moves to stem supplies would add to trade issues — including China’s exports of electric vehicles — that have strained ties between Brussels and Beijing.

Reiche said there should be Europe-wide policies to ensure China cannot simply outbid European smelters to get scrap metal out of the region, without specifying what restrictions could be implemented. This topic should be part of a wider concept around resilience of European economies, she said.

China has boosted purchases of copper scrap over the past five years as its own smelters ramp up output and supplies of mined copper ore become more costly. But this year has seen an additional dynamic with China seeking supplies from many other countries after a collapse in direct scrap shipments from the US, typically the single biggest origin.

In the first seven months of the year, China took in about 204,000 tons of copper scrap from European Union nations, up 3.5% from a year earlier. Still, its supplies were still a relatively small part of China’s total imports, at about 15%.

Reiche also called for measures to promote mining of lithium and rare earths in Germany.

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