America is the world's second-biggest copper consumer (after China) but produces just 5% of global supply and processes only 3%. About 45% of American demand is met by net imports, primarily refined pipes, tubes and wires. Freeport-McMoRan accounts for 60% of domestic production. Rio Tinto runs the Bingham Canyon mine in Utah, which produces around 275,000 tonnes a year, nearly a quarter of American output.
The Resolution Copper mine in Arizona, a joint venture between Rio Tinto and BHP, could if approved meet another quarter of American demand.
Copper is increasingly important for the energy transition and AI infrastructure. Cars use more than 20kg of copper each (more for electric vehicles). Data centres need roughly 27 tonnes per megawatt of capacity—nearly 3,000 tonnes for a large site. Nvidia's NVL72 server rack uses around two miles of copper wire.
Mining new copper in America takes years or decades and costs roughly three times as much as elsewhere. Building a new smelter costs around $3bn and requires huge power.
An electric car needs two to four times more copper than a petrol one, though efficiency is improving: an electric car made in 2025 needs about 10% less copper than one built in 2020. New data centres are expected to consume perhaps 300,000 tonnes of refined copper in 2025, or 1% of global output. Analysts joke that the great copper crunch is always four or five years away. China's troubled economy is becoming less reliant on construction, which used to devour the stuff; Tom Price of Panmure Liberum, a bank, reckons that could free up 2m tonnes a year.
On September 8th 2025 a mudslide hit Indonesia's Grasberg mine, the world's second-largest. The facility remains shut; Freeport, its operator, does not expect full production to resume before 2027. The outage, together with disruptions in Chile and the Democratic Republic of Congo, could remove 400,000 tonnes of refined copper supply in 2025. Even so, the disruptions are within the industry's typical "disruption allowance", and Chile's Escondida mine, the world's largest, is producing unexpectedly large amounts.
In July 2025 Donald Trump set a 50% tariff on American copper imports—which make up half of America's copper supply—sending prices to records on the country's main commodity exchange. In August America exempted refined copper from the duties, but prices are rising again amid speculation about new tariffs. The arbitrage opportunity created by higher American prices has caused an exodus of stock to New York: some 340,000 tonnes are now stranded in the city, up from 80,000 in January 2025.
Copper is priced above $10,600 a tonne in London, an 18-month high, despite the world economy hardly surging. Elevated prices have sparked a $50bn merger between Anglo American and Teck Resources, two giant miners. In January 2026 Rio Tinto confirmed talks to acquire Glencore, which would create the world's biggest miner, worth $220bn; a combined entity would produce about 1.6m tonnes of copper a year, roughly 7% of total mine output. BHP, the world's biggest miner, is considering reopening defunct mines. Even Saudi Aramco, an oilier firm, is hiring copper traders.
The fall in the dollar, driven by the Federal Reserve cutting interest rates, has made commodities more attractive to large generalist investment funds, which have swarmed the copper market since 2020. These "tourist" buyers pay little attention to the nitty-gritty of supply and demand; their obsession with interest rates makes metal prices stickier.
S&P Global reckons that copper demand will increase from 28m tonnes in 2025 to 42m tonnes by 2040. Supply is constrained: many existing mines are ageing, and in South America—source of most of the world's copper, particularly Chile—the "head grade" (copper per tonne of raw ore) has fallen from 1.3% two decades ago to 0.7%. Building a new mine can take close to 20 years. Even if governments simplify approvals, bottlenecks in processing and refining copper—a dirty, energy-intensive process even less popular than mining—will remain. The total value of mining tie-ups in 2025 reached $94bn, the most in a decade, as firms turned to acquisitions to secure copper rather than wait decades for new mines.
The difference between theory and practice is that in theory, there is no difference between theory and practice, while in practice, there is.