Copper’s tariff high fails to lift other LME metals

Doctor Copper hasn’t been quite the same since US President Donald Trump announced an investigation into US imports back in February.

The resulting tariff trade has pulled the global supply chain out of shape, creating feast in the US and famine everywhere else.

London Metal Exchange (LME) copper is set to close out the first half of the year with a gain of 12%, beaten only by the wild tin market.

The rest of the LME complex, however, is still recovering from the shock of Trump’s broader “Liberation Day” tariffs.

Trade and geopolitical turbulence have lit a fire under the precious metals, but industrial metals are largely treading water at the mid-year mark as concern grows about the tariff-related drag on global manufacturing activity.

Here’s the LME score-card at the end of the first half of 2025.

Copper – feast and famine

The CME’s US copper contract is currently trading at a spot premium of $1,200 per metric ton over the LME’s international price.

The tariff trade has been extraordinarily volatile over the last few months, but the open arbitrage window continues to suck in metal from the rest of the world.

CME stocks are booming and LME stocks are falling as physical copper is redirected to the US LME time-spreads have become turbulent as available inventory shrinks. The cash-to-three-month period is in steep backwardation.

The market is expecting Chinese smelters to lift exports to help fill the supply-chain gaps, but until they do the London copper market is a dangerous place for bears.

Everything will change again when the US administration decides whether to impose import tariffs. That presages more turbulence ahead of the November deadline for the Section 232 investigation into US imports to be completed.

Wild tin

The London tin market has been a roller-coaster ride so far this year. Three-month tin hit a three-year high of $38,395 per ton in early April before slumping to $28,925 after the “Liberation Day” metals meltdown.

Tin is currently back above $33,500 per ton thanks to persistent supply pressures. Although one disruption has been resolved with the swift reopening of the Bisie mine in Democratic Republic of Congo, the longer-term disruption at the Man Maw mine in Myanmar rumbles on.

The Wa State authorities in control of the Man Maw mine have been negotiating new licenses to allow it to reopen after an absence of almost two years.

But the cross-border flow of tin concentrates to China’s smelters remains no more than a trickle.

China’s tin concentrate imports fell by 36.5% in the January-May period and the country’s smelters are feeling the squeeze. Refined production was down 15% on a year-over-year basis in June, according to local data provider Shanghai Metal Market.

Shanghai Futures Exchange stocks of tin have been creeping lower since the middle of April, while LME inventory has halved over the first half of the year.

Tin is the only LME metal other than copper to be trading in sizeable backwardation, attesting to the underlying supply stress in this market.

Aluminum split

The aluminum market has been fractured by Trump’s 50% import tariffs but the impact is being seen in the US Midwest premium rather than arbitrage between the look-alike CME and LME futures contracts.

US consumers are now paying around $1,250 per ton over the LME price to get their metal. Premiums everywhere else are sinking, partly due to displaced metal flows and partly due to weak demand in Europe and parts of Asia.

Most of the recent action on the London market has been a mega tug-of-war for available metal against a backdrop of falling exchange stocks.

As ever with aluminum, it’s hard to discern the signal from the noise.

Although the LME three-month price has recovered from its April trough of $2,335 per ton to $2,600, the year-to-date gain stands at a modest 3%, failing to match analysts’ high expectations at the start of 2025.

Nickel weighed down by surplus

LME nickel also closes out the first half of 2025 little changed from its January starting point.

Stocks of LME nickel fell in May for the first time since March 2024, in a sign that the relentless build in inventory may be abating.

For how long, though, remains to be seen.

Nickel’s electric dreams have faded as Chinese electric vehicle manufacturers switch to non-nickel battery chemistry. Indonesia, meanwhile, continues to ramp up production, generating more surplus metal.

LME three-month nickel is trading just above the $15,000-per-ton level, which is close to the cost of making refined metal from Indonesian nickel pig iron, according to analysts at Macquarie Bank.

However, while the downside may be limited at current price levels, any significant recovery is going to be dependent on whether Indonesia can restrain its booming nickel production sector.

No-one’s holding their breath.

Lead gears up, zinc winds down

The lead market’s close relationship with the automotive battery sector has cushioned the heavy metal from this year’s tariff turbulence.

The replacement battery sector follows its own cycle and lead is now entering one of its peak seasonal demand periods, when high northern hemisphere temperatures cause a spike in battery failures.

LME lead is up 6% since the start of the year, closing the gap with sister metal zinc, which remains the persistent under-performer among the LME metals.

World zinc mine production rose by a robust 5.1% on a year-over-year basis in January-April, according to the International Lead and Zinc Study Group.

That supply surge is feeding through to higher refined production, particularly in China, and the Group assesses the global refined metal market registered a hefty 151,000-ton supply surplus in the period.

Look no further to understand why the galvanizing metal is so out of favour, down 6% since the start of 2025.