Trump’s copper tariff will weigh heaviest on Chile

President Trump announced plans on Tuesday to introduce a 50% tariff on copper imports in a bid to boost national production of the metal, sending US copper prices up 13% to an all-time high of ~$5.69 per pound, per the Financial Times.

Though timelines remain unclear, now that import taxes for the red metal are set to match the 50% tariffs on steel and aluminum, the world’s top copper-producing countries will be looking to strike trade deals that could minimize the effect on their copper exports.

While the usual economic heavy hitters wait for details, one nation in particular will be watching closely: Chile, the world’s biggest copper producer, which dug out 5.3 million tons of the stuff last year — nearly 5x as much as the US, according to data from the US Geological Survey.

To the wire

Copper is one of the most widely used commercial metals, with applications in electronics, plumbing, construction, and (until recently) telephone lines, to name a few — all things that the US copper industry wants to get a slice of. In an interview with CNBC, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick said, “The idea is to bring copper home… We need that kind of production in America.”

With rich natural reserves, Chile’s copper industry boomed in the 1990s as the country adopted development strategies and private industry investments in the wake of the Cold War. Today, it’s the largest supplier of copper to the US.

But as demand for copper continues to swell, the sheer quantity of output required to meet this could put America in a supply bind, with the chairman of Chilean state miner Codelco Maximo Pacheco telling Reuters that the US “lacks the capacity for self-sufficiency.”