Highest Recorded Copper Price Revealed
In 2025, the price of copper reached unprecedented heights, driven by a confluence of strong demand and supply constraints. This perfect storm intersected green energy and technology sectors with constrained supply chains, longer project lead times, strategic stockpiling, and tariff-driven market distortions.
Copper, a critical component in clean energy infrastructure, electric vehicles, and data centers, saw its demand surge due to investments in these sectors. The global clean energy infrastructure alone is projected to require about $400 billion in 2025, driving copper consumption significantly. Electric vehicle copper demand, for instance, is growing from 1.2 to 2.2 million tonnes.
Supply bottlenecks and declining ore grades have tightened the supply against this rising demand. Copper grades have declined by 40% since 1990, and mine development timelines have lengthened to over 16 years. This creates a significant supply-demand gap projected to widen long term.
China, the world's largest producer of refined copper, produces 57% of global refined copper. Despite strategic expansion, concentrate supply constraints continue to limit output growth.
In the U.S., limited domestic processing capacity and the imposition of a 50% tariff on some copper imports in early 2025 have reduced foreign competition and created bottlenecks for finished copper products. This has increased the pricing power of U.S. producers and allowed price markups despite stable or declining raw copper costs.
Tariffs and geopolitical trade actions have also played a role in the copper price volatility. The April 2025 U.S. tariff announcement, although later revised, initially pushed prices to nearly $6 per pound. However, subsequent tariff measures contributed to significant price volatility, including a sharp price plunge on July 30, 2025. Despite this, the fundamentals remain bullish, and prices have shown resilience above key support levels.
The copper market entered a supply deficit in 2025, with demand increasingly decoupled from general economic growth and tied instead to structural growth sectors such as AI, energy transition, and emerging markets.
Looking ahead, the fundamentals for copper are expected to tighten further as demand increases from sectors such as electric vehicles and energy storage. As many as 194 new copper mines may need to come online by 2050 to support massive demand from the global energy transition, according to a May 2024 report from the International Energy Forum (IEF).
For investors, the copper market suggests a return to a bull market cycle for the red metal in the medium-term, presenting an opportunity for those interested in copper-mining stocks. The rise of AI technology is also bolstering the demand outlook for copper, with commodities trader Trafigura predicting that AI-driven data centers could add one million MT to copper demand by 2030.
On July 24, 2025, the price of copper reached its highest recorded price of US$5.959 per pound, or US$13,137.75 per metric ton.
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