Trump announced 50% duties on copper imports. The price of the metal jumped to a record

US President Donald Trump said on July 8 that he would impose 50% duties on imports of copper in the US. After that, the exchange value of the metal jumped by more than 17% in the moment - to a new record. Trump hinted that other harsh industry tariffs would soon follow: for example, on the products of pharmaceutical companies.

The US president announced the duties on copper at a cabinet meeting, reports CNBC. Trump did not specify exactly when the levies would take effect, the channel noted.

"We're doing copper today," Trump said. - I believe the duty on copper will be 50 percent."

Trump also said he would soon announce duties on pharmaceutical imports "at a very, very high level, on the order of 200%," wrote CNBC. According to the US president, the authorities will give pharmaceutical companies up to a year and a half to start manufacturing their products in the US before the new duties take effect.

Copper prices jumped to a record high after Trump's surprise announcement: September futures rose 17.3% to $5.8955 per pound, according to CNBC data.

Shares of mining company Freeport-McMoRan rose by 5%: investors expect domestic producers to benefit from the new duties, the TV channel explained.

"In the short term, prices will rise significantly as the market has been laying down discounts in the expectation that the duty rate will be lower. So there will be a lot of buying before the levies take effect," said Plusmining founder Carlos Guajardo as quoted by Bloomberg.

The increase in duties on copper imports was expected by the market: because of this, supplies have already been redirected toward the U.S., where stockpiles were accumulating in warehouses, said Bernstein analysts on Tuesday, who were quoted Investing.com. But they raised their price forecasts for the metal: Trump's decision will push quotes up to $10,000 a ton in the third quarter, with a fourth quarter price of around $9,700 a ton, Bernstein believes. The note notes that the reorientation of supplies towards the US is likely to continue until the official introduction of duties, which could happen at any time, but the deadline is mid-November.

Bernstein reiterated an Outperform rating ("above market") for key stocks related to the copper market: these are Antofagasta, Glencore and Rio Tinto, Investing.com reasserts.

The U.S. imports nearly half of the copper it needs, while domestic production of the metal has fallen 11% since 2021 as mining companies struggle to expand existing deposits and launch new projects, wrote Reuters in February, citing data from the U.S. Geological Survey.

"The U.S. has no chance in the foreseeable future of increasing its own copper mining and processing capacity, so this [an attempt to raise duties on copper imports] looks like another own goal," Ole Hansen, head of commodity strategy at Saxo Bank, said at the time.

Only two copper smelters are currently operating in the U.S., Reuters noted. Asarco, controlled by conglomerate Grupo Mexico, talked in 2024 about plans to restart another mothballed smelter. However, there has been no news of that since then, nor similar plans for other such plants, and building a new one would take more than two years, wrote Amy Gower, an analyst at Morgan Stanley. 

This article was AI-translated and verified by a human editor