Copper retreats from one-week high as inventories rise, confusion swirls on tariffs

LONDON: Copper prices pulled back on Monday as inventories extended their rise and investors puzzled over the future of U.S. tariffs and Chinese trading ahead of reopening after a holiday.

Benchmark three-month copper on the London Metal Exchange fell 0.4% to $12,913 a metric ton in official open-outcry trading after hitting a more than one-week high of $13,050 earlier in the session.

LME copper has rebounded nearly 4% over the past four sessions, but is still well below a record peak of $14,527.50 hit on January 29.

“The fact that there are more visible inventories outside of the U.S. is a bit of a dampener, that may indicate a bit of softness in demand,” said Nitesh Shah, commodity strategist at WisdomTree. “But it’s always hard knowing whether it’s inventory that’s going from off-exchange (warehouses) to exchange or simply just a weakening of overall demand.”

Copper stocks in LME-approved warehouses rose 6,675 tons to 241,825 tons, data showed on Monday, the highest since March 2025, having surged 70% so far this year.

Metals along with the dollar and equity markets were hit by uncertainty after the U.S. Supreme Court struck down President Donald Trump’s emergency tariffs on Friday, leading him to quickly announce a new temporary tariff of 15% on U.S. imports from all countries.

Traders were also waiting for the Shanghai Futures Exchange, which has been closed for the Lunar New Year holiday, to reopen on Tuesday.

“A big thing is what the Chinese are going to do when they come back in, whether there’s going to be some extra domestic demand, because that’s been lacking. We’ll have to wait and see on that one,” said Robert Montefusco at Sucden Financial.

LME nickel climbed 1.2% to $17,560 a ton in official activity after an official of top producer Indonesia said it was considering revoking the environmental permit of a company after a landslide hit a mine waste zone at its nickel processing hub.

In other metals, LME aluminium slipped 0.2% to $3,096 a ton, zinc fell 0.9% to $3,353, lead lost 0.4% to $1,958, while tin advanced 1.9% to $47,425.