Copper touched an all-time high of US$14,617 a tonne on the London Metal Exchange on Tuesday, its fourth consecutive session of gains, as traders positioned for United States tariffs on refined metal that have already drained supply from the rest of the world.
The record surpassed the US$14,533 the benchmark three-month contract reached Monday, which had itself passed a previous peak of US$14,527.50 set in January, according to Reuters. Copper has risen more than 68 per cent since April 2025, supported by a long-running mismatch between constrained mine supply and rising demand from data centres, renewable energy equipment and electricity grids.
For Canada, the number that matters most is not the price but a distinction buried in American trade policy. Refined copper is not currently tariffed by the United States. Semi-finished copper is. A presidential proclamation in August imposed a 50 per cent duty on semi-finished products such as pipe, wire, sheet and tube, while directing the Commerce Department to reassess whether refined metal should be added. Canadian cathode still crosses the border duty free, which makes a record benchmark price worth considerably more to a Canadian seller than to a producer already paying to get in.
How much is at stake is easier to measure here than in most trade files, because Canada’s refined copper business is unusually concentrated. Canada exported $1.8 billion in refined copper in 2024, up 17 per cent from the previous year, and the United States took more than 99 per cent of it, according to Natural Resources Canada. Nearly all of that metal comes from a single facility, Glencore’s Canadian Copper Refinery in Montreal, the only operating copper refinery in the country. One plant, one product, one customer.
The reprieve has no fixed expiry date. The Commerce Department’s Section 232 review of refined copper was due June 30 and remains unpublished more than two months later. Proposals reported during the delay range from a 15 per cent duty beginning in January 2027 to as much as 30 per cent by 2028. Until that report lands, the market is pricing a tariff whose size and start date nobody outside the administration knows.
The anticipation is what created the squeeze. A record 225,094 tonnes of refined copper entered the United States in July, and Comex warehouse stocks have climbed as high as 766,000 short tons. That metal is sitting in American warehouses rather than being consumed, which is why its effect on supply everywhere else has been to tighten rather than loosen it.
On the mining side, record prices arrive at a useful moment. Teck Resources approved a life extension at Highland Valley Copper in British Columbia, Canada’s largest copper mine, in July 2025 at a cost of $2.1 billion to $2.4 billion. The project pushes the mine’s life from 2028 out to 2046 and supports average production of roughly 132,000 tonnes a year, a decision taken well before prices reached current levels. Hudbay Minerals, with operations in British Columbia and Manitoba, and Glencore’s Kidd operations in Ontario add further volume.
Mine output and refined exports are not the same business, though, and they do not face the same tariff. Most of what Canada ships abroad is ore and concentrate, worth $4.0 billion in 2024, which goes to smelters in other countries and is not what the Section 232 refined review covers. The narrow, high-value stream exposed to that decision is the Montreal cathode.
The timing sharpens the point. Canada’s own counter-tariffs on $27.6 billion in U.S. goods took effect Tuesday, a separate measure that does not target copper but adds to the uncertainty facing companies moving material across the border in both directions.
What happens next turns on the overdue Commerce report. If Washington leaves refined copper alone, Canadian cathode keeps duty-free access to a market paying record prices, which is close to the best outcome available to a seller in this market. If it does not, the country’s only copper refinery will be selling into a tariff wall with no second customer to turn to, at the precise moment the metal it produces has never been worth more.
via Reuters
