President Trump recently announced a 50% tariff on copper imported to the US effective Aug. 1, sending copper prices higher and provoking a quick push for more copper mining at sites like the 6,000-acre Ivanhoe Electric site in Arizona.
The US produces only half of what it needs in copper for electronics and related industries, especially automotive. If the president can succeed in beefing up domestic production that may sound like a win-win unless the environmental impact becomes dire from new mines and heavy smelting plants.
It normally takes decades to identify a copper mining site and then create finished products. As a result, the impact of new copper mining might last well beyond the Trump years.
We can foresee an all-out effort to find copper for use in electronics, some more whimsical than via mining. To raise patriotic participation among America's school children, can we expect a future patriotic push for extracting the copper contained in pennies (before they are made extinct)?
Should this seem like a World War II drive for necessaries, who knows if it is really all that far-fetched? (Copper is only 2.5% of modern pennies, but was upwards of 95% prior to 1982.) The tariff topsy-turvy has become stranger and stranger. Even the Wall Street Journal has editorialized concern, calling President Trump "Tariff Man" after he raised the tariff on Canada to 35% starting Aug. 1.
If Trump can achieve more production and manufacturing within the US for a variety of prodcuts, maybe his ideas won't seem as extreme, but the odds against domestic copper production are about as unfavorable as getting little Suzie to part with her penny bank.
Clearly, Trump is pushing unpredictability to gain negotiating advantage with Canada and other countries, but how is that supposed to work with copper talks across the table? Chile and Canada are the top foreign providers of copper imports to the US, but they aren't pushovers and realize how creating the copper resource is a long game.