Antonina Levashenko: “Duties on copper in the US will hit the construction of data centers”

"The US announced tariffs on copper as it revealed a national trade deficit (i.e. the value of imported copper exceeds the value of exports). Morgan Stanley estimates that in 2024, reported copper in the US accounted for more than half (53%) of all demand. And this is the next round of the trade war.

News of the tariffs has already led to an increase in the price of copper futures on the New York Mercantile Exchange (COMEX) in July. If the tariffs are indeed slapped, the main pressure will affect Chile as the main importer of refined copper (the others are Canada, Peru and Mexico). For Chile, copper exports are the largest source of foreign exchange earnings. Affected exports may weaken the Chilean peso, cut revenues, which may aggravate pressure on public finances (Chile’s public debt is 42%). At the same time, the US does not export from Russia, with sanctions ban on copper since 2024. However, indirectly, the imposition of the duty will also affect the Russian market, as the country is among the top 10 countries in copper mining.

Trump is introducing measures to boost US self-sufficiency in copper supply. This raises the question of where the US will get copper, given the lack of alternatives outside of the seven copper mines in the US. For example, the share price of Freeport (which controls all the largest US mines) rose 5% in July. Building up the industry is a time-consuming task: development of new mines will take at least 10–15 years, and lower imports will make it difficult to develop US end-users, for example, construction of new data centers in the US, development of electrical engineering companies," assessed the situation Antonina Levashenko.