Why The Copper Shortage Isn't Ending Soon

A 2026 study by S&P Global about the future of AI and electrification highlighted the crucial role of copper. A recent post on USCF's Substack feed about the AI revolution fueling commodities demand also noted long-term structural shortfalls in copper supply. Given that, how should investors and traders think about copper's role in their portfolios?

We're telling the same story about copper that we have been for the last few years. It really came to the forefront last year. You'd had a number of years where copper supply has just not kept up with demand, and the forecast demand just keeps getting bigger and bigger and bigger. Whereas you have, there's just not enough new supply, new mines being opened.

There's, in fact, strikes and things like that. Last year was a very tumultuous year. You had tariffs, premiums on US copper versus London copper, all kinds of crazy things going on, but ultimately copper was up. Our copper ETF was up 38%.

We think that was finally this theme playing out that there is not enough copper in the world to meet future demand. Copper is more tied to the global economy, especially manufacturing, at least historically, than most other commodities, if not all other commodities. We think that the story is still in place that with AI centers, all of this, even if you had a recession, a global slowdown, that would be a temporary hit that might be even offset by some of this lack of supply relative to demand.

So, we're still pretty bullish on copper. Great year last year, but I think there's still room for this to go on into the next five, even 10 years.