In recent weeks, you've likely heard a lot about rare-earth substances, thanks to President Trump's stalled efforts to secure a minerals deal with Ukraine and his talk of annexing Greenland. These vital substances fuel the growing renewables and electric-vehicle industries. However, many experts warn that the shortage of another crucial metal, used in electronics, wiring and even plumbing could be just as concerning.
Copper may be even more crucial to the nation's shift toward a greener, more efficient economy than rare elements like neodymium or praseodymium. While copper has been mined for thousands of years, the demand for it has surged in the past two decades, driving its price up nearly 75% since 2020.
Yet, despite its importance, the world's largest copper mines in regions like Chile, Peru and the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) are struggling to meet demand amid a global shortage, all while grappling with escalating environmental concerns.
Cassandra Cummins, the CEO of New Jersey-based Thomas Instrumentation, has had to factor in the steep increase in copper that goes into the circuit boards and other electronic components that the family-owned firm manufactures for commercial clients.
She explains that while the microchips the company uses contain rare earth minerals, around 90% of a finished circuit board is copper. Take LEDs, for example: while the rare earth element terbium makes them shine green, "it's a tiny fraction compared to the amount of copper on the board," she says. "But if we don't have copper, if my suppliers don't have copper, then we don't have boards."
The rising cost of copper in recent years has significantly increased the price of those finished boards for Thomas Instrumentation's customers. "We apologize, but we have to increase prices," Cummins says.
It's a problem that will only get worse. A report last year by S&P Global blamed the shortfall on a number of problems, including underinvestment in new exploration and mines due to the industry's focus on short-term returns.
BHP, a Melbourne, Australia-based multinational mining and metals company says that existing mines will produce around 15% less copper in 2035 than in 2024. The average grade of ore has also diminished by around 40% since 1991, BHP says.
"Most of the high-grade stuff's already been mined," says Mike McKibben, an associate professor emeritus of geology at University of California, Riverside. "So, we have to go after increasingly lower grade material" that cost more to mine and process, he says.
That's a recipe for higher prices and unmet demand, says Shon Hiatt, a business professor at the University of Southern California. "It's projected that in the next 20 years, we will need as much copper as all the copper that has ever been produced up to this date," he says.
Copper's ability to be recycled plays a significant role in easing some supply challenges, but it's far from sufficient. Only around one-third of the copper supply in the U.S. comes from recycled material.
The U.S. already imports half of the copper it consumes from countries including Canada and Mexico. Like aluminum and steel, copper is poised to be swept up in the White House trade war. Last month, the president ordered an investigation into copper imports from Canada, and U.S. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick has confirmed that Trump will add copper to the 25% tariffs on Canadian steel and aluminum.
Opening new mines isn't easy. Last year, China finally broke ground on a copper mine in Afghanistan after 16 years of delays. In the U.S., there are environmental and social concerns and an often lengthy permitting process, according to Simon Jowitt, a geologist and the director of the Nevada Bureau of Mines and Geology.
"Mining historically has not had a good reputation for doing the right thing on the environment ... especially large-scale open pit mines like in Arizona, like here in Nevada, like Utah," he says.
Stuart Burgess, chairman and co-founder of Sandy, Utah-based Burgex Mining Consultants, says his team is the "boots on the ground" that physically stakes new mining claims for companies. "We're seeing a lot of interest in copper, particularly here in the United States," he says.
He notes that it takes four times as much copper to make an electric vehicle as a gas-powered one and that charging all those EVs will require massive upgrades to the power grid, further straining the demand-side of the copper equation. "If we take all the known deposits in the world that are proven ... it would probably meet half that demand by 2050," he says.
There are ways to squeeze out efficiencies, but only at the margins, Burgess says. "Everybody looks for that magic black box where you can put one copper element in and get two out. It doesn't exist," he says.
However, it can take a decade or more to develop new sources of copper into productive mines, Jowitt says. Even then, there are no guarantees. Take for example the planned Resolution Copper Mine in Arizona, which has been caught up in a more than decade-long legal and political battle that has drawn in three presidents over concerns voiced by the state's Native American tribes. Another planned copper mine in Arizona and two in Minnesota have run into significant delays.
The ore in Resolution isn't at the surface, where it can be strip-mined, but 6,000 feet underground, where the costs of extracting copper "are three to four times more expensive," Burgess says.
Even if new mines can be opened, the U.S. only has two operating copper smelters to handle the raw ore — one in Arizona and another in Utah. They are "already running at capacity," Jowitt says.
"There's potential for much more copper here, but we don't have enough smelting capacity," he says. "Even if new mines come online, the issue is where we will process it."
Canada has been the answer until now, but that can easily be disrupted if the current trade war heats up any further, he worries.
"We're losing friendly relations with those places that could actually do the copper processing," Jowitt says. "You've got the mine, but you need that intermediate step before you can start putting that copper into copper wiring, into our electric vehicles, into whatever you want to put it in."
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