President Donald Trump signed an executive order Tuesday directing the Commerce Department to open an investigation into new potential tariffs for copper imports.
The move came after the president placed 25% tariffs on steel and aluminum imports earlier and announced plans for a new reciprocal tariff strategy.
However, unlike Trump’s previous tariff announcements, White House officials said the copper investigation was prompted by a national security threat, not trade imbalances.
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“What we know is we’re steadily losing melting and refining capacity, both in absolute and relative terms,” a senior White House official said Tuesday, noting both copper and copper wiring’s prevalence in U.S. military equipment and the rapid rate at which the world is “increasingly being electrified.”
White House officials said those future supply constraints would “make it difficult for us to defend ourselves and basically run a prosperous economy,” in the case of any future “interdictions,” but the administration did not answer questions about any new investments, from either domestic or foreign entities, the president might be courting to boost domestic supply.
Trump’s order directs Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick to launch a Section 232 investigation of copper. Those investigations typically take 270 days to two years to complete, but Peter Navarro, Trump’s senior White house counselor for manufacturing and trade, said he expected the investigation to be completed in “Trump time, which is as quickly as possible.”
Navarro also blamed China for expanding its “economic influence” over global copper markets as contributing to future supply problems.
The United States sees a general trade surplus on copper and its downstream products but has also undergone stagnation in regard to domestic smelting and refining capacity. Meanwhile, Beijing recently financed a new copper smelting facility in the Democratic Republic of Congo.
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“Like our steel and aluminum industries, our great American copper industry has been decimated by global actors attacking our domestic production. To build back our copper industry, I will investigate the imposition of possible tariffs,” Lutnick said in a statement coinciding with Trump’s announcement, adding, “It’s time for copper to come home.”
Still, White House officials declined to answer questions on details of potential tariffs, saying publicly doing so would undermine the Commerce Department’s investigation.