ING report reveals 2025-2026 global copper market “tight balance” tug-of-war may rise to $12,000 next year

The Zhitong Finance App learned that ING's latest copper market report shows that in 2025, the global copper market is experiencing a “tight balance” game dominated by the supply side. The price bottom line has been raised above 11,000 US dollars per ton, but the key to continuing to break through upward still depends on China's demand.

Since this year, mining accidents, floods, and equipment failures have continued one after another: Indonesia's Glassberg mine declared force majeure due to a landslide in the main mining area, and production capacity, which accounts for 4% of global production, was delayed until 2027; the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) Camoa-Cacura mine was flooded in May, and an underground accident occurred in July at Chile's established giant Teniente Mine; in addition, the overall mine supply gap for 2025 and 2026 was raised to one breath 800,000 tons, of which the 2026 refining copper gap will account for 600,000 tons.

“Blood Crash” on the mine side is only the first half of the story; the reshaping of trade flows is the main line of the second half. Trump threatened to tax copper at the beginning of the year. Traders rushed to drive refined copper to the US. From January to August, US refined copper imports soared by more than 50% year on year. As a result, COMEX inventories soared 300%, breaking 400,000 tons to a record high, driving local US prices out of a premium of 2,500 US dollars per ton; while LME and SHFE inventories fell all the way down, leaving less than 500,000 tons of observable inventory “outside the US”, which is two and a half years low.

ING warned that once the US actually imposes 15% import tariffs according to the plan in June 2026, this price crack will tear even bigger; conversely, if Trump exempts it again, Tianliang US copper will pour back into the global market, and COMEX premiums will instantly collapse, and the global balance sheet may reverse from shortage to excess.

The demand-side story is equally tangled. China's real estate completion chain is still weak, hampering the use of copper for construction, but non-real estate lines such as power grids, landscape installations, new energy vehicles, air conditioning, and washing machines have maintained double-digit growth this year, keeping apparent demand in the right range. However, high prices have caused downstream “fear of being high”: Yangshan copper's premium fell to its lowest level since July, smelters began planning “export to domestic sales”, and China's refined copper exports were rare in October; at the same time, domestic processing costs (TC/RC) fell to a historical bottom of negative 60 US dollars, and the contradiction between mine-side shortages and rapid smelting capacity lay blatantly on the table.

ING anticipates that in 2026, unless new ore is released early, TC/RC will still “fly close to the ground”. Even if Chinese smelters fulfill the verbal agreement of “joint production reduction of 10%,” the extruded concentrate will go to overseas refineries, and the actual output of refined copper worldwide will not necessarily hurt our bones.

At the price level, ING fixed the average price of copper at 11,500 US dollars/ton in 2026. The pace rose first and then declined: inventory spillover effects were strongest in the second quarter, and spot conditions were tight or pushed prices to a high of 12,000 US dollars; the tariff path in the second half of the year was clear. If exemptions were implemented and premiums returned, copper prices fell moderately. The upside risk comes from actual production cuts in Chinese smelters, black swans coming out of mines, and a sudden acceleration in demand for long tracks such as power grids and AI data centers; downside risks are declining demand in China and inventory backflow due to reversal of US tariff policies, plus macroeconomic headwinds resonance.

In the long run, ING believes that electrification, renewable energy, and computing power infrastructure will provide a “structural seat belt” for copper demand. The story is far from over, but the 2026 train is bound to fluctuate between “supply crisis” and “demand hesitation.”