Copper touched $14,000, yet the stockpile is building only in the US
While much of the commodity market focus has understandably been on highly volatile oil prices, it is worth keeping in mind what is going on in other segments.
This includes copper, which traded above $14,000 earlier today (see Bloomberg chart), driven in part by the "demand side" of the ongoing AI revolution.
Copper touched $13,999 a metric ton on the London Metal Exchange on August 4. The same day, LME warehouse stocks fell to 244,025 tons and Shanghai's to 69,300, while US COMEX inventory alone swelled to 717,314 short tons.
Copper price tops $14,000 as US stockpiles swell before tariff call (Mining.com, 2026-08-04)Only one market moved the other way
Two-thirds of exchange copper stock sits in one country. The world does not look short of metal; the metal looks like it moved to one place.
Mining.com (2026-08-03), Business Recorder (2026-08-04), COMEX figure converted from short tons to metric tons
Money waiting on a tariff call
The US Commerce Department has not yet announced whether refined copper will face a tariff. Semi-finished and derivative copper products already carry a 50 percent duty. Bringing metal in before any tariff hits means buying it cheaper, and more than 200,000 tons arrived at US ports in July alone. That is the most in a single month since tracking began in 2014.
If the price rose because metal got rerouted rather than because it got scarce, that rise can reverse the day Commerce makes its call.
AI is still 1 percent of demand
Goldman Sachs counts data center copper use at roughly 1 percent of world demand today. The AI demand El-Erian pointed to looks less like today's consumption and more like tomorrow's volume already priced in. Wood Mackenzie, folding in grid buildout, puts 2030 demand at 1.1 million tons a year. What eats copper is not the server itself but the substations and cabling that feed it power. Copper runs under half a percent of a data center's construction cost, so builders do not buy less of it even as the price climbs.
Supply is leaking too
The 2026 benchmark treatment charge was set at $0 a ton. That means smelters processing ore are being paid nothing for the service, a sign of how scarce concentrate has become. Freeport-McMoRan's Grasberg mine in Indonesia declared force majeure after a mud inflow accident in September 2025 and cut its 2026 output target by roughly a third. Chile's Codelco produced 110,900 tons in March, down 10 percent from a year earlier.
What the Commerce announcement will decide
Goldman Sachs puts its 2026 base case for copper at $10,000-11,000 a ton, citing Chinese demand that fell 8 percent year over year last quarter. Today's price sits $3,000 above that range. If that gap came from metal rushing ahead of a tariff, US warehouses lose their reason to keep filling once Commerce rules. If it came from the mines instead, the tariff announcement will not move the price much at all. Which explanation you pick for the same price decides whether buying now is late or early.
- Copper touched $14,000 a metric ton in London on August 4.
- On the surface, AI looks like the culprit. A figure circulating puts one data center's copper use at up to 50,000 tons.
- But data centers today account for only about 1 percent of world copper demand, and what actually moved the price that day was metal rushing into the US ahead of a tariff announcement.
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Sources
- Original Mohamed El-Erian (@elerianm) · flags copper alongside oil, noting it traded above $14,000 partly on AI demand · 2026-08-04
- Mining.com Copper tops $14,000 as US stockpiles swell ahead of the tariff decision, with exchange-by-exchange inventory figures · 2026-08-04
- Mining.com US copper inflows surge in July as the market awaits Trump's tariff call, the largest monthly inflow since records began in 2014 · 2026-08-03
- Business Recorder Copper rises as LME and Shanghai inventories fall and oil steadies, cross-checking exchange inventory figures · 2026-08-04
- Goldman Sachs Sets a 2026 base-case range of $10,000-11,000 a ton, citing softer Chinese demand
- Wood Mackenzie Projects AI data center and grid-related copper demand at 1.1 million tons a year by 2030 · 2025-10-15
- IEA Explains why the 2026 benchmark treatment charge was set at $0 a ton and the pressure smelters face · 2026-03-02
Retrieved 2026-08-05 · copper price and exchange inventories as of 2026-08-04, Codelco output as of March 2026