The Conquest of Copper: Securing America’s Supplies of the Most Critical Mineral

Copper is the indispensable metal that conducts electricity through every feature of industrial civilization. It is essential to the deployment of infrastructure, from basic electrification to the most advanced compute clusters.

Just thirty years ago, the United States enjoyed near self-sufficiency and a domestic supply chain that seamlessly connected mines, smelters, and manufacturers. Today, copper exemplifies the vulnerabilities inherent in industrial disintegration. American industry relies on refined copper imports for about half its supply while exporting about a third of domestic mine output abroad, unrefined.

Demand for copper is projected to grow much faster than the supply from mines already operating or in development, as electricity networks, electrification, and data centers compete for the available metal. Under stated policies, the International Energy Agency projects a 25 percent gap between the copper needed from mines and the output of existing and announced projects in 2035.

Yet high copper prices offer no assurance of survival for American smelters as global demand for unrefined copper grows. Chinese overcapacity has driven the premiums historically paid to refiners below zero in the spot market, making foreign processing more attractive even to companies that own and operate America’s last two operating primary copper smelters: Freeport-McMoRan’s Miami smelter in Arizona and Rio Tinto’s Kennecott smelter in Utah. America could lose the ability to process much of its own copper just as global competition for the scarce and irreplaceable resource increases.

The most pressing policy priority is ensuring that America’s remaining smelters survive the current period of negative refining charges and the explosion of Chinese capacity. Averting a midstream meltdown requires a temporary floor on domestic processing charges tied to investment in modernization, so that intervention promotes renewal and growth rather than managed decline. American copper could be a national advantage, leveraging exceptional reserves and employing industrial innovation, but not if the federal government permits the final smelters to close.