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Copper had its best year since 2009, fueled by a short-term supply crunch and bets that demand for the key electrification metal will outstrip production.
The red metal reached a series of all-time highs at the end of the year overvoltageup 42% on the London Metal Exchange this year. This makes it the best performing of the six publicly traded industrial metals. Prices fell 1.1% on Wednesday, the last trading day of 2025.
The latest gains were also driven by traders rushing to ship copper to the United States in anticipation of possible tariffs, creating tensions elsewhere. Trump’s plan to revisit primary copper tariffs in 2026 revived arbitrage trading that rattled the market earlier in the year, tightening availability elsewhere even as underlying demand in major buyer China weakened. This price gap recently narrowed amid a December rally on the LME.
“The expectation of future U.S. tariffs on refined copper imports has resulted in more than 650,000 tonnes of the metal entering the country, creating tensions outside the United States,” wrote Natalie Scott-Gray, senior metals analyst at StoneX Financial Ltd. She noted that two-thirds of visible global stocks are now held within the COMEX.
Beyond Tariff-driven flows, a fatal accident at the world’s second-largest copper mine in Indonesia, an underground flood in the Democratic Republic of Congo and a deadly rock explosion at a mine in Chile have all added further pressures to the availability of the metal.
The near-term outlook for copper demand growth has been clouded by weakness in China, the world’s largest consumer of the red metal. The country’s real estate market is stuck in a years-long recession, which has reduced the need for plumbing and copper wiring, while consumer spending has remained sluggish, weighing on the appetite for finished goods such as electronic devices.
Nevertheless, strong dynamics in global copper demand are expected in the long term. BloombergNEF estimates that consumption could increase by more than a third by 2035 in its baseline scenario.
Drivers of this trend include the ongoing shift to cleaner energy sources such as solar panels and wind turbines, the growing adoption of electric vehicles and the expansion of electricity grids.
Copper stabilized down 1.1% at $12,558.50 a tonne in London. Prices hit a record high of $12,960 on Monday.
