In the first three quarters of 2026, the copper market emerged from a strong market amid macroeconomic disturbances and repeated games between industrial supply and demand. Although factors such as the geographical conflict in the Middle East and the Federal Reserve's monetary policy shift once triggered market adjustments, mine-side supply constraints continued to strengthen, compounded by expectations of US copper import tariffs, triggering a restructuring of global trade flows, and the copper price center continued to rise. Entering the fourth quarter, analysts believe that factors such as mine-side supply shortages, smelting production cuts, and inventory migration, which previously dominated the market, will still provide support, but the final direction of the US “232 copper tariff” policy and whether US copper stocks can return will become important variables affecting copper prices. The SMM copper research team believes that US tariff expectations continue to attract copper resources to the US, which is an important reason for the misallocation of global copper resources. At the same time, the domestic supply of recycled copper raw materials is tight, weakening the supplemental effect on the supply of refined copper, compounding centralized downstream stocking before the Mid-Autumn Festival and National Day, and jointly driving the tightening of domestic spot supply.

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