July 14, 2025 • 17 mins
Last week, President Trump sent markets into a tizzy, when he proposed tariffs on one of the world’s most valuable commodities: Copper.
On today’s Big Take podcast, Bloomberg’s economic statecraft reporter Joe Deaux joins host David Gura to discuss the president’s ongoing push to bring copper manufacturing back to the US. Why 50% levies on copper could affect everything from your car and iPhone to the nation’s electrical grid, and what the copper industry is doing to get ahead.
Read more:
Trump’s 50% Copper Import Tariff Said to Include Refined Metal
Once-in-a-Generation Copper Trade Upends a $250 Billion Market
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Bloomberg Audio Studios, podcasts, radio news.
Speaker 2 (00:08):
The United States's trading partners are trying to navigate a
global trade landscape that's being radically reconfigured by the Trump administration.
Over the weekend, President Trump announced a thirty percent across
the board tariff on imports from Mexico and a thirty
percent tariff on imports from the European Union. It comes
on the heels of another major trade announcement. Last week.
(00:29):
President Trump held a cabinet meeting at the White House.
Now this is something his predecessors did behind closed doors,
but Trump beckoned in reporters with their cameras and their microphones.
Speaker 1 (00:40):
You could leave the cameras there. It's fun.
Speaker 3 (00:43):
Trump is a fairly accessible individual.
Speaker 2 (00:46):
Jode reports on mining and metals at Bloomberg, where his
beat is economic state craft.
Speaker 3 (00:52):
I've covered steel workers for almost the entirety of my career,
and he will go to a mill and just like
chat with the guys who worked the shop floor, and
then he'll also like talk to the billionaire CEO. And
it's like an incredible talent. So he invited the press
into this cabinet meeting, and somehow the question of copper
tearfs came up, and we haven't heard about copper tairas
(01:14):
for a long time. He hasn't said anything about him
in a while, and so this time he just said, yeah,
we're doing copper tears.
Speaker 1 (01:20):
I believe the tariff on copper. We're going to make
it fifty percent.
Speaker 4 (01:24):
And the market went wild.
Speaker 2 (01:29):
US copper features search to a record of the President.
Trump says he'll put a fifty percent tariff on the metal.
There's nervous sort of scramble to get metal from the
rest of the world to US destinations.
Speaker 4 (01:41):
Before the tariffs kick.
Speaker 3 (01:42):
In, Copper prices rose in New York by seventeen percent
at one point. I mean, I've covered copper for a decade.
I've never seen a seventeen percent move in copper prices.
Speaker 2 (01:53):
Joe says he looked up copper prices on the Bloomberg terminal,
hoping to find out the last time prices rose by
this much.
Speaker 3 (02:00):
It gave me an answer, which was in a gray color,
which means it only knows, going back to data from
nineteen eighty eight, that it's never been that much of
a move.
Speaker 2 (02:09):
The reason for that move is copper is everywhere, and
to change in how it's priced could upend everything from
the production of cars and electronics to the construction of
homes and offices and military installations. I'm David Gura, and
this is the big take from Bloomberg News today on
(02:31):
the show The Anatomy of a Tariff. What President Trump's
decision to target a key commodity reveals about his evolving
approach to trade and how a renewed push to return
to America's industrial past could dampen its economic future. To
understand why this new copper tariff has rocked markets, take
(02:52):
a second to think about how much of what you
use every day includes it.
Speaker 3 (02:56):
It's all over your house because every electrical outlet is
connected to wiring, and all wiring is copper wiring in
your house.
Speaker 2 (03:05):
Bloomberg's Jode says, it's in electronics, wires, cars.
Speaker 3 (03:09):
It's in every skyscraper, these microphones, it's in every computer, automobile, iPhone.
Speaker 2 (03:15):
These are the first processors using copper technology that will
ever be shipping in a product. That's Steve Jobs in
nineteen ninety nine announcing a new line of Apple computers.
Speaker 4 (03:27):
So we are extremely happy. These things are speed demons.
Speaker 2 (03:30):
Copper is in the rivets on Levi's jans.
Speaker 3 (03:33):
Those fashionable copper rhythms.
Speaker 2 (03:36):
There was a time many decades ago when much of
that copper came from the US of a Chevrolet boasted
about that in this film. The car company produced in
the nineteen fifties.
Speaker 3 (03:47):
Copper from Utah and Montana, from Michigan and Wyoming. Copper
is one of those industries where the United States was
a dominant producer of what it mestically consumed.
Speaker 2 (04:01):
But as the world became increasingly electrified, demand for copper
shot up, and US producers couldn't keep up with that demand,
so they turned to other countries to help fill the gap. Today,
more than forty percent of the copper the United States
uses is imported.
Speaker 3 (04:18):
Chile is like the copper producing country in the world,
and with all mineral resources, there's just like luck. Like
the United States sits on a lot of oil, that's lucky,
Chile sits on a lot of copper, and for them,
that's lucky. The grades are depleting, but it had been
(04:39):
very high grade where you can just scrape it off
the top of the earth and easily pull off the
rock part and get the copper and send them off
as a product. So the United States one, you have
your own depleting copper ore bodies. There's surge of demand
right as globalization really takes hold. You realize this far
(05:00):
more that you need to make than was previously expected.
And so if you can't do it, you look elsewhere
and you say, well, great, there's this fairly great trading
partner in Chile. They do some good stuff. Canada are
wonderful too, Mexico, other parts of the world. You say, okay,
well they'll fill in what we can't produce. And so
(05:20):
you realize at some point that you can't be the
sole distributor of that, and that's.
Speaker 2 (05:24):
Okay, but it's not okay with President Trump. Joe says,
it's hard to know why the President has decided to
focus on copper now, but this is part of what's
motivating him.
Speaker 3 (05:36):
The President of United States has made clear for both
of his terms that he wants on shoring of manufacturing
in the United States of America. Bring it back, bring
it back, come back to America, and make America great again.
Really is about a period of United States history of
manufacturing that's like really like nineteen fifty to like nineteen
seventy nine.
Speaker 4 (05:54):
Right, like Buffalo is a great example.
Speaker 3 (05:56):
The peak population of a city like Buffalo was in
the nineteen fifty es. So the President heres, hey, this
was a industry that we were once dominant in, and
he probably thinks, well, why can't we be that again?
Speaker 2 (06:10):
So Trump announced this fifty percent tariff on copper imports,
writing on truth social quote, this fifty percent tariff will
reverse the Biden administration's thoughtless behavior and stupidity. America will
once again build a dominant copper industry. The thing is
boosting US copper production is unlikely to be easy.
Speaker 3 (06:30):
I can tell you it takes ten to twenty years
to get a mine from Okay, here's the deposit to
We're now rolling off commercial scale copper to the biggest
wire companies in the United States.
Speaker 2 (06:44):
Take a mine out in Arizona called Resolution Copper as
an example. It assumed control of the historic Magma mine
in two thousand and four and began the permitting process
about ten years later.
Speaker 3 (06:55):
It has faced so many hurdles. It's a copper owned
by Rio Tinto and part owned by BHP, big conglomerate,
the two biggest miners on planet Earth. So this is
a very serious deposit. If that mine were to start tomorrow,
it won't it would be able to push out the
equivalent of one quarter of US demand of copper just
from that mine. So it's a big deal and it
(07:17):
is still trying to get to production.
Speaker 2 (07:22):
Here's the CEO of Rio Tinto on Bloomberg Television last year.
Speaker 4 (07:25):
You're still dealing with just the permitting of this project.
Speaker 2 (07:28):
When could we actually see it working.
Speaker 4 (07:31):
Yeah, it's a long process.
Speaker 2 (07:33):
So we are talking towards the end of the decade
that we can have production.
Speaker 3 (07:38):
And that's the problem with mines. President United States says
do this now. That'd be great, but you have permitting processes.
And even if the President United States were to just
completely obliterate the permitting processes, you also have communities. Resolution
has had so much trouble getting up off the ground
because it is built next to an indigenous sacred site.
(08:00):
And that's just one example of the fights you will face.
It doesn't matter if you're on a red state or
a blue state. You do not like mines or big
manufacturing facilities in your backyard.
Speaker 2 (08:13):
Nimby, not in my backyard.
Speaker 3 (08:14):
Not my backyard. And like this is not just like
an American thing. This is people nimby in particular to
industrial activity is everywhere, and there is no expert in
this space that I have spoken to who thinks these
tears will go into place. And suddenly you're going to
see copper mind projects coming up on the list. You're
(08:37):
probably just gonna have a situation where Freeport mcmaran and
Rio Tinto continue to produce in the United States at
the same pace that they have, maybe a little bit more,
and you're going to remain dependent on half of your
copper coming from outside the country, and that copper will
be more pricey. And then we deal with the fallout.
Speaker 2 (08:56):
Fallout that has already started. There are three different categories
of copper rack copper, refined copper, and semi finished copper
products things like wires, metal sheets, tubes, and plates. And
the president's announcement immediately raised questions about what would be tariffed.
Speaker 3 (09:13):
Are you getting a tariff on raw copper? Are you
getting it on semi fabricated products like wire and tube
and copper faucets.
Speaker 4 (09:22):
Out totally right?
Speaker 3 (09:24):
And then like what about scrap, because you know, the
least cost ton to make new copper is scrap copper.
It's a great thing about metal, like you just once
you're done with it, you pull it out, you can
remelt it down to molten liquid, and then you can
recast it with other copper and it's new copper.
Speaker 2 (09:45):
Joe says, the President has answered some of those questions.
He's reported those fifty percent tariffs will include both refined
and semi finished copper. Refined copper is widely used in
electrical grids, construction, car manufacturing, and consumer electronics, while sem
i finished copper is important to the military industrial supply chain.
(10:05):
After the break, Joe explains how copper suppliers are rushing
to beat the president's August first deadline, plus what this
tariff tells us about how the administration plans to approach
tariffs on other sectors. In the past week, as news
(10:28):
about President Trump's copper tariff has thrown producers and traders
for a loop, we've seen some winners emerge commodity traders, miners,
and banks that have managed to ship copper to the
US ahead of August first, when the tariff is scheduled
to be put in place. The value of the metal
has skyrocketed. Some traders have described getting more than one
thousand dollars on every ton of copper, which is more
(10:52):
than ten times what it usually goes for.
Speaker 3 (10:54):
I talked to one of my shipping sources and they said,
you heard about right, You heard about Puerto Rico, right,
And I was like, well, what do you mean. He
goes people are already shipping metal on the water on
boats to those locales because they can't get to the
mainland in time, or they're concerned they won't get to
(11:14):
the mainland in time. And I said, well, like, is
that a problem? And the best answer he gave me was, well,
think about it. Not every harbor or not every dock
is prepared to handle copper. And why is that important?
Because copper is one of the most valuable products that
thieves like to take out of warehouse.
Speaker 2 (11:37):
Is that right?
Speaker 3 (11:39):
Yeah, like you hear every I feel like every few
years there's a story that comes out that's like the
copper from X was stripped out of this thing, and
you know it was a big heist and somebody made
a lot of money off of it. Copper per pound
is at about five dollars and fifty cents, and you know,
if you can strip it out or if you can
steal it in cathode form.
Speaker 4 (11:59):
You're gonna make a pretty penny.
Speaker 3 (12:00):
And so he said, listen, the guys in Hawaii don't
handle copper imports. So one of the struggles that shippers
and brokers are going to have to do is call
up the dock and say, you have to handle this
with care, and there has to be security around this
copper because it's going to be sitting in your port
(12:24):
for X period of time.
Speaker 2 (12:26):
That copper is already piling up in port cities like
New Orleans, which is getting increasingly close to capacity. The
sudden push to get copper to the US as quickly
as possible has also left places like China with dangerously
low inventory. It's just the latest example of how the
US president's actions have caused turmoil in the global economy.
(12:47):
And in that same cabinet meeting last week, President Trump
previewed another tarif announcement in a way that seemed off
the cuff.
Speaker 1 (12:54):
And we'll be announcing something very soon on pharmaceuticals. We're
going to give people about a year a year and
a half to come in, and after that they're going
to be tariffed if they have to bring the pharmaceuticals
into the country, to drugs and other things into the country,
they're going to be tarriffed at a very very high rate,
like two hundred percent.
Speaker 2 (13:11):
I asked Joe what we know about how those tariffs
and pharmaceuticals could play out and how they're part of
a broader strategy when it comes to sectoral tariffs, levies
that aren't specific to countries but to whole sectors.
Speaker 3 (13:24):
I was talking to a trade lawyer some weeks ago
who said, look at pharmaceuticals.
Speaker 4 (13:29):
And copper and rare earths.
Speaker 3 (13:32):
And these are all the Section two thirty two's, among
many others right now lumber that are being researched by
the Commerce Department.
Speaker 2 (13:39):
And these are tariffs that the president could put in
place on national security grounds.
Speaker 4 (13:42):
Correct, that's exactly right.
Speaker 3 (13:44):
The law passed during the Kennedy administration back in nineteen
sixty two. This trade lawyer said, we call these the
problem child trade issues. There's a reason Trump didn't touch
all of these with Section two thirty two during his
first term. He only did steal an aluminum, and that's
because steel and aluminum are actually pretty easy to fit
into that law, which is there's a national security importance
(14:06):
to those two different products.
Speaker 2 (14:07):
Got to build ships, go, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 3 (14:09):
It's pretty straightforward, like steal is steel and aluminum is aluminum,
and like it's easy to implement, But pharmaceuticals and lumber
and copper are far more complex. And I think the
struggle right now inside the Commerce Department is they're trying
to get it right. They're trying to figure out how
(14:30):
they get around these nuances, and I think the career
officials are saying, it's just not one number, it's just
not one policy that will solve this issue.
Speaker 2 (14:41):
Is there a commensurate amount of fear in that industry
to what we're seeing in the metals industry as well?
About what that would mean if you saw two hund
percent tariffs on pharmaceutical ingredients, right.
Speaker 4 (14:51):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (14:52):
One of these trade sources told me is, like, do
you think Pfizer really wants to worry about producing generic drugs? Like, no,
they don't. It's low margin. They'll lose money making these things.
And like there's a reason this is like so many
other things. Why did X industry go abroad, you know,
to India or to China or wherever.
Speaker 4 (15:13):
It might be.
Speaker 3 (15:13):
Well, because smart people in the United States said, this
is not worth it for us to do this thing anymore.
There's no profit there, or if there is a profit,
it's such a slight margin that we feel like we're
wasting our time, in our shareholder's time.
Speaker 2 (15:28):
Could you talk about the broad strategy here. There's been
so much focus in recent weeks on these country by
country trade policies. We've seen the letters, we've heard the
president's threats, and now we have these sectoral tariffs. How
does that fit into the president's broader trade strategy? Is
it being forced in effect by this court decision that
we saw a few weeks ago that by using the
(15:48):
Section two thirty two, this National security law, they're an
effect easier for him to put in place and have
confidence that they'll stay in place.
Speaker 4 (15:55):
That's absolutely correct.
Speaker 3 (15:56):
I spoke to Wilbur Ross, the former Commerce secretary under
Trump's first administration, some months ago, right when the president
took office, and I asked him, like, is Trump going
to go ahead with tariffs? And what Barros said, The
President knows he can use Section two thirty two tariffs
in Section three oh one tariffs, and the courts won't
stop him because the courts already heard the cases in
(16:20):
Trump one point zero and said yes, three oh one
and two thirty two are written into US law and
allows the President of United States to utilize these on
grounds of national security.
Speaker 2 (16:32):
Joe says, it's hard to say how it's going to
play out and if these tariffs will actually have staying power.
Speaker 3 (16:38):
Once the tariff is implemented, and how does it actually
affect purchasing, How does it actually affect potential inflation, How
does the President and his team react to that, and
where do they feel generous in giving some sort of
break or or the opposite.
Speaker 2 (17:01):
This is the Big Take from Bloomberg News. I'm David Gura.
To get more from The Big Take and unlimited access
to all of Bloomberg dot com, subscribe today at Bloomberg
dot com slash podcast offer. If you like this episode,
make sure to follow and review The Big Take wherever
you listen to podcasts. It helps people find the show.
Thanks for listening.
Speaker 4 (17:19):
We'll be back tomorrow.
Bloomberg Audio Studios, podcasts, radio news.
Speaker 2 (00:08):
The United States's trading partners are trying to navigate a
global trade landscape that's being radically reconfigured by the Trump administration.
Over the weekend, President Trump announced a thirty percent across
the board tariff on imports from Mexico and a thirty
percent tariff on imports from the European Union. It comes
on the heels of another major trade announcement. Last week.
(00:29):
President Trump held a cabinet meeting at the White House.
Now this is something his predecessors did behind closed doors,
but Trump beckoned in reporters with their cameras and their microphones.
Speaker 1 (00:40):
You could leave the cameras there. It's fun.
Speaker 3 (00:43):
Trump is a fairly accessible individual.
Speaker 2 (00:46):
Jode reports on mining and metals at Bloomberg, where his
beat is economic state craft.
Speaker 3 (00:52):
I've covered steel workers for almost the entirety of my career,
and he will go to a mill and just like
chat with the guys who worked the shop floor, and
then he'll also like talk to the billionaire CEO. And
it's like an incredible talent. So he invited the press
into this cabinet meeting, and somehow the question of copper
tearfs came up, and we haven't heard about copper tairas
(01:14):
for a long time. He hasn't said anything about him
in a while, and so this time he just said, yeah,
we're doing copper tears.
Speaker 1 (01:20):
I believe the tariff on copper. We're going to make
it fifty percent.
Speaker 4 (01:24):
And the market went wild.
Speaker 2 (01:29):
US copper features search to a record of the President.
Trump says he'll put a fifty percent tariff on the metal.
There's nervous sort of scramble to get metal from the
rest of the world to US destinations.
Speaker 4 (01:41):
Before the tariffs kick.
Speaker 3 (01:42):
In, Copper prices rose in New York by seventeen percent
at one point. I mean, I've covered copper for a decade.
I've never seen a seventeen percent move in copper prices.
Speaker 2 (01:53):
Joe says he looked up copper prices on the Bloomberg terminal,
hoping to find out the last time prices rose by
this much.
Speaker 3 (02:00):
It gave me an answer, which was in a gray color,
which means it only knows, going back to data from
nineteen eighty eight, that it's never been that much of
a move.
Speaker 2 (02:09):
The reason for that move is copper is everywhere, and
to change in how it's priced could upend everything from
the production of cars and electronics to the construction of
homes and offices and military installations. I'm David Gura, and
this is the big take from Bloomberg News today on
(02:31):
the show The Anatomy of a Tariff. What President Trump's
decision to target a key commodity reveals about his evolving
approach to trade and how a renewed push to return
to America's industrial past could dampen its economic future. To
understand why this new copper tariff has rocked markets, take
(02:52):
a second to think about how much of what you
use every day includes it.
Speaker 3 (02:56):
It's all over your house because every electrical outlet is
connected to wiring, and all wiring is copper wiring in
your house.
Speaker 2 (03:05):
Bloomberg's Jode says, it's in electronics, wires, cars.
Speaker 3 (03:09):
It's in every skyscraper, these microphones, it's in every computer, automobile, iPhone.
Speaker 2 (03:15):
These are the first processors using copper technology that will
ever be shipping in a product. That's Steve Jobs in
nineteen ninety nine announcing a new line of Apple computers.
Speaker 4 (03:27):
So we are extremely happy. These things are speed demons.
Speaker 2 (03:30):
Copper is in the rivets on Levi's jans.
Speaker 3 (03:33):
Those fashionable copper rhythms.
Speaker 2 (03:36):
There was a time many decades ago when much of
that copper came from the US of a Chevrolet boasted
about that in this film. The car company produced in
the nineteen fifties.
Speaker 3 (03:47):
Copper from Utah and Montana, from Michigan and Wyoming. Copper
is one of those industries where the United States was
a dominant producer of what it mestically consumed.
Speaker 2 (04:01):
But as the world became increasingly electrified, demand for copper
shot up, and US producers couldn't keep up with that demand,
so they turned to other countries to help fill the gap. Today,
more than forty percent of the copper the United States
uses is imported.
Speaker 3 (04:18):
Chile is like the copper producing country in the world,
and with all mineral resources, there's just like luck. Like
the United States sits on a lot of oil, that's lucky,
Chile sits on a lot of copper, and for them,
that's lucky. The grades are depleting, but it had been
(04:39):
very high grade where you can just scrape it off
the top of the earth and easily pull off the
rock part and get the copper and send them off
as a product. So the United States one, you have
your own depleting copper ore bodies. There's surge of demand
right as globalization really takes hold. You realize this far
(05:00):
more that you need to make than was previously expected.
And so if you can't do it, you look elsewhere
and you say, well, great, there's this fairly great trading
partner in Chile. They do some good stuff. Canada are
wonderful too, Mexico, other parts of the world. You say, okay,
well they'll fill in what we can't produce. And so
(05:20):
you realize at some point that you can't be the
sole distributor of that, and that's.
Speaker 2 (05:24):
Okay, but it's not okay with President Trump. Joe says,
it's hard to know why the President has decided to
focus on copper now, but this is part of what's
motivating him.
Speaker 3 (05:36):
The President of United States has made clear for both
of his terms that he wants on shoring of manufacturing
in the United States of America. Bring it back, bring
it back, come back to America, and make America great again.
Really is about a period of United States history of
manufacturing that's like really like nineteen fifty to like nineteen
seventy nine.
Speaker 4 (05:54):
Right, like Buffalo is a great example.
Speaker 3 (05:56):
The peak population of a city like Buffalo was in
the nineteen fifty es. So the President heres, hey, this
was a industry that we were once dominant in, and
he probably thinks, well, why can't we be that again?
Speaker 2 (06:10):
So Trump announced this fifty percent tariff on copper imports,
writing on truth social quote, this fifty percent tariff will
reverse the Biden administration's thoughtless behavior and stupidity. America will
once again build a dominant copper industry. The thing is
boosting US copper production is unlikely to be easy.
Speaker 3 (06:30):
I can tell you it takes ten to twenty years
to get a mine from Okay, here's the deposit to
We're now rolling off commercial scale copper to the biggest
wire companies in the United States.
Speaker 2 (06:44):
Take a mine out in Arizona called Resolution Copper as
an example. It assumed control of the historic Magma mine
in two thousand and four and began the permitting process
about ten years later.
Speaker 3 (06:55):
It has faced so many hurdles. It's a copper owned
by Rio Tinto and part owned by BHP, big conglomerate,
the two biggest miners on planet Earth. So this is
a very serious deposit. If that mine were to start tomorrow,
it won't it would be able to push out the
equivalent of one quarter of US demand of copper just
from that mine. So it's a big deal and it
(07:17):
is still trying to get to production.
Speaker 2 (07:22):
Here's the CEO of Rio Tinto on Bloomberg Television last year.
Speaker 4 (07:25):
You're still dealing with just the permitting of this project.
Speaker 2 (07:28):
When could we actually see it working.
Speaker 4 (07:31):
Yeah, it's a long process.
Speaker 2 (07:33):
So we are talking towards the end of the decade
that we can have production.
Speaker 3 (07:38):
And that's the problem with mines. President United States says
do this now. That'd be great, but you have permitting processes.
And even if the President United States were to just
completely obliterate the permitting processes, you also have communities. Resolution
has had so much trouble getting up off the ground
because it is built next to an indigenous sacred site.
(08:00):
And that's just one example of the fights you will face.
It doesn't matter if you're on a red state or
a blue state. You do not like mines or big
manufacturing facilities in your backyard.
Speaker 2 (08:13):
Nimby, not in my backyard.
Speaker 3 (08:14):
Not my backyard. And like this is not just like
an American thing. This is people nimby in particular to
industrial activity is everywhere, and there is no expert in
this space that I have spoken to who thinks these
tears will go into place. And suddenly you're going to
see copper mind projects coming up on the list. You're
(08:37):
probably just gonna have a situation where Freeport mcmaran and
Rio Tinto continue to produce in the United States at
the same pace that they have, maybe a little bit more,
and you're going to remain dependent on half of your
copper coming from outside the country, and that copper will
be more pricey. And then we deal with the fallout.
Speaker 2 (08:56):
Fallout that has already started. There are three different categories
of copper rack copper, refined copper, and semi finished copper
products things like wires, metal sheets, tubes, and plates. And
the president's announcement immediately raised questions about what would be tariffed.
Speaker 3 (09:13):
Are you getting a tariff on raw copper? Are you
getting it on semi fabricated products like wire and tube
and copper faucets.
Speaker 4 (09:22):
Out totally right?
Speaker 3 (09:24):
And then like what about scrap, because you know, the
least cost ton to make new copper is scrap copper.
It's a great thing about metal, like you just once
you're done with it, you pull it out, you can
remelt it down to molten liquid, and then you can
recast it with other copper and it's new copper.
Speaker 2 (09:45):
Joe says, the President has answered some of those questions.
He's reported those fifty percent tariffs will include both refined
and semi finished copper. Refined copper is widely used in
electrical grids, construction, car manufacturing, and consumer electronics, while sem
i finished copper is important to the military industrial supply chain.
(10:05):
After the break, Joe explains how copper suppliers are rushing
to beat the president's August first deadline, plus what this
tariff tells us about how the administration plans to approach
tariffs on other sectors. In the past week, as news
(10:28):
about President Trump's copper tariff has thrown producers and traders
for a loop, we've seen some winners emerge commodity traders, miners,
and banks that have managed to ship copper to the
US ahead of August first, when the tariff is scheduled
to be put in place. The value of the metal
has skyrocketed. Some traders have described getting more than one
thousand dollars on every ton of copper, which is more
(10:52):
than ten times what it usually goes for.
Speaker 3 (10:54):
I talked to one of my shipping sources and they said,
you heard about right, You heard about Puerto Rico, right,
And I was like, well, what do you mean. He
goes people are already shipping metal on the water on
boats to those locales because they can't get to the
mainland in time, or they're concerned they won't get to
(11:14):
the mainland in time. And I said, well, like, is
that a problem? And the best answer he gave me was, well,
think about it. Not every harbor or not every dock
is prepared to handle copper. And why is that important?
Because copper is one of the most valuable products that
thieves like to take out of warehouse.
Speaker 2 (11:37):
Is that right?
Speaker 3 (11:39):
Yeah, like you hear every I feel like every few
years there's a story that comes out that's like the
copper from X was stripped out of this thing, and
you know it was a big heist and somebody made
a lot of money off of it. Copper per pound
is at about five dollars and fifty cents, and you know,
if you can strip it out or if you can
steal it in cathode form.
Speaker 4 (11:59):
You're gonna make a pretty penny.
Speaker 3 (12:00):
And so he said, listen, the guys in Hawaii don't
handle copper imports. So one of the struggles that shippers
and brokers are going to have to do is call
up the dock and say, you have to handle this
with care, and there has to be security around this
copper because it's going to be sitting in your port
(12:24):
for X period of time.
Speaker 2 (12:26):
That copper is already piling up in port cities like
New Orleans, which is getting increasingly close to capacity. The
sudden push to get copper to the US as quickly
as possible has also left places like China with dangerously
low inventory. It's just the latest example of how the
US president's actions have caused turmoil in the global economy.
(12:47):
And in that same cabinet meeting last week, President Trump
previewed another tarif announcement in a way that seemed off
the cuff.
Speaker 1 (12:54):
And we'll be announcing something very soon on pharmaceuticals. We're
going to give people about a year a year and
a half to come in, and after that they're going
to be tariffed if they have to bring the pharmaceuticals
into the country, to drugs and other things into the country,
they're going to be tarriffed at a very very high rate,
like two hundred percent.
Speaker 2 (13:11):
I asked Joe what we know about how those tariffs
and pharmaceuticals could play out and how they're part of
a broader strategy when it comes to sectoral tariffs, levies
that aren't specific to countries but to whole sectors.
Speaker 3 (13:24):
I was talking to a trade lawyer some weeks ago
who said, look at pharmaceuticals.
Speaker 4 (13:29):
And copper and rare earths.
Speaker 3 (13:32):
And these are all the Section two thirty two's, among
many others right now lumber that are being researched by
the Commerce Department.
Speaker 2 (13:39):
And these are tariffs that the president could put in
place on national security grounds.
Speaker 4 (13:42):
Correct, that's exactly right.
Speaker 3 (13:44):
The law passed during the Kennedy administration back in nineteen
sixty two. This trade lawyer said, we call these the
problem child trade issues. There's a reason Trump didn't touch
all of these with Section two thirty two during his
first term. He only did steal an aluminum, and that's
because steel and aluminum are actually pretty easy to fit
into that law, which is there's a national security importance
(14:06):
to those two different products.
Speaker 2 (14:07):
Got to build ships, go, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 3 (14:09):
It's pretty straightforward, like steal is steel and aluminum is aluminum,
and like it's easy to implement, But pharmaceuticals and lumber
and copper are far more complex. And I think the
struggle right now inside the Commerce Department is they're trying
to get it right. They're trying to figure out how
(14:30):
they get around these nuances, and I think the career
officials are saying, it's just not one number, it's just
not one policy that will solve this issue.
Speaker 2 (14:41):
Is there a commensurate amount of fear in that industry
to what we're seeing in the metals industry as well?
About what that would mean if you saw two hund
percent tariffs on pharmaceutical ingredients, right.
Speaker 4 (14:51):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (14:52):
One of these trade sources told me is, like, do
you think Pfizer really wants to worry about producing generic drugs? Like, no,
they don't. It's low margin. They'll lose money making these things.
And like there's a reason this is like so many
other things. Why did X industry go abroad, you know,
to India or to China or wherever.
Speaker 4 (15:13):
It might be.
Speaker 3 (15:13):
Well, because smart people in the United States said, this
is not worth it for us to do this thing anymore.
There's no profit there, or if there is a profit,
it's such a slight margin that we feel like we're
wasting our time, in our shareholder's time.
Speaker 2 (15:28):
Could you talk about the broad strategy here. There's been
so much focus in recent weeks on these country by
country trade policies. We've seen the letters, we've heard the
president's threats, and now we have these sectoral tariffs. How
does that fit into the president's broader trade strategy? Is
it being forced in effect by this court decision that
we saw a few weeks ago that by using the
(15:48):
Section two thirty two, this National security law, they're an
effect easier for him to put in place and have
confidence that they'll stay in place.
Speaker 4 (15:55):
That's absolutely correct.
Speaker 3 (15:56):
I spoke to Wilbur Ross, the former Commerce secretary under
Trump's first administration, some months ago, right when the president
took office, and I asked him, like, is Trump going
to go ahead with tariffs? And what Barros said, The
President knows he can use Section two thirty two tariffs
in Section three oh one tariffs, and the courts won't
stop him because the courts already heard the cases in
(16:20):
Trump one point zero and said yes, three oh one
and two thirty two are written into US law and
allows the President of United States to utilize these on
grounds of national security.
Speaker 2 (16:32):
Joe says, it's hard to say how it's going to
play out and if these tariffs will actually have staying power.
Speaker 3 (16:38):
Once the tariff is implemented, and how does it actually
affect purchasing, How does it actually affect potential inflation, How
does the President and his team react to that, and
where do they feel generous in giving some sort of
break or or the opposite.
Speaker 2 (17:01):
This is the Big Take from Bloomberg News. I'm David Gura.
To get more from The Big Take and unlimited access
to all of Bloomberg dot com, subscribe today at Bloomberg
dot com slash podcast offer. If you like this episode,
make sure to follow and review The Big Take wherever
you listen to podcasts. It helps people find the show.
Thanks for listening.
Speaker 4 (17:19):
We'll be back tomorrow.
Hosts And Creators
Sarah Holder
Saleha Mohsin
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