Traders Brace for Copper Wave to Hit LME After Tariff Shock

Copper traders are rushing to book up storage space in a bet that US President Donald Trump’s shock decision not to tariff the main traded form of the metal will prompt a wave of copper into warehouses on the London Metal Exchange.

For months, traders had fallen over one another to ship copper to the US to capture sharply higher prices. They rapidly built up a stockpile worth more than $5 billion spread across US ports — particularly New Orleans, which has improbably become host to the world’s largest exchange copper inventory.