Wednesday, April 25, 2012

Peak US Copper Consumption?


Click to enlarge.

I offer two trend lines for your consideration.

APPARENT CONSUMPTION = PRIMARY PRODUCTION + SECONDARY PRODUCTION + IMPORTS – EXPORTS ± STOCK CHANGES

August 11, 1941
COPPER UNDER FULL CONTROL

In the future, sales or transfers of metal by producers to their subsidiary or affiliated companies and even by one division of a single company to another will be subject to control by the director of priorities. It is clearly understood by the fabricators that their products will be subject to priorities also. Non-defense orders will be accepted on an "if and when" basis.

It is questionable if defense orders will take up the capacity on some of the products of the fabricators, but getting copper for non-defense uses will be another matter. Even fabricators with defense orders are having their problems.

See Also:
Trend Line Disclaimer

Source Data:
USGS: Historical Statistics for Mineral and Materials Commodities

1 comment:

Stagflationary Mark said...

For what it is worth, I suspect that the actual long-term trend lies somewhere between the two trend lines I have offered.

And if I had to guess, and this is only a guess, I would say that it will end up being far closer to the blue line than the red line.