He starts by observing China holds an estimated 2.05 million tonnes in strategic reserves and US warehouse stocks heading toward 1.3 million tonnes by year-end. Industrial buyers elsewhere must now compete for the copper remaining outside those holdings.

He forecasts $22,050 per tonne in the second quarter of 2027, roughly 50% above prices when he issued this week’s analysis. He calls available inventories “unprecedented lows” and estimates that US and Chinese stockpiling will encumber 71% of global inventories by year-end.

China’s Reserves and US Warehouses

“The combination of de-globalization and decades of underinvestment in supply has created vulnerabilities such that, by year-end, stockpiling in the USA and China will have encumbered 71% of global inventories.”

US futures trade at a premium to London contracts, attracting copper into American warehouses. Ghali notes that the London Metal Exchange also has US warehouses, so metal can move between American sites after the premium fades and remain in the country even if tariffs are dropped.

The End-2028 Inventory Projection

ZH also noted:

Ghali called this the “most acute copper scarcity on record“ and a “de-globalization endgame.” The industrial metal’s story is quickly shifting from an AI data center boom to a liquidity crisis, as free-floating copper inventories decline to unprecedented levels.

The bank’s charts show Chinese copper concentrate treatment charges below zero and project refined-market deficits in 2027 and 2028. Smelters are competing for mine feedstock while stockpiling absorbs refined metal.