With President Donald Trump’s recent announcement of 50% tariffs on copper imports under Section 232 of the Trade Expansion Act, the United States has correctly identified copper as a material of strategic national importance.
For decades, U.S. politicians have sold free trade agreements as a beacon of prosperity for the American economy. The logic was tidy: “Most of the world’s consumers live outside the U.S.—so if we open foreign markets, prosperity will follow.” On paper, it sounded plausible. But in practice, it became one of the most costly economic miscalculations in our modern history.
Tariffs on Southeast Asia will go up at least two-fold by August 1 from the current rate of 10%, based on screen-shot letters President Trump shared on his Truth Social account on Monday.
If America fails to defend its copper industry today, it will lose the industrial backbone for tomorrow’s economy. The combination of speculative arbitrage, Chinese overproduction, and predatory pricing is decimating American copper mills.
A Market Access Charge (MAC) might be the perfect addition to the tariff agenda; a surgical tool to tax capital inflows.
Depending on where you get your information, you would be forgiven for believing that we are getting buried by inflation, the stock market is in shambles, and that we need to start hoarding Chinese yuan to pay for our morning lattes.
The CPA Domestic Market Share Index (DMSI) dropped abruptly in the first quarter of 2025 as the massive pre-tariff import surge driven by stockpiling heavily outweighed current U.S. manufacturing output.
Following April’s trade deficit data, which showed a complete freefall in trade during the “Liberation Day” tariff month, May’s trade deficit rose by 18.7% on a monthly basis to $71.5 billion, according to the Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA).
Tariffs were supposed to be inflationary, but so far, they’ve been proven wrong. Inflation over the last several months was not caused by 10% tariffs on Southeast Asia, nor by the short-lived 145% tariffs on China.
Last year, it wasn’t even in the Top 10. This year, they’re number one. General Motors was ranked as the most China-exposed U.S. multinational by Strategy Risks, a political risk consultancy in New York.
