Can the West Afford to Build Its Own Copper Industry?

Copper, the key transition metal, hit a price of $11,000 per ton a couple of months ago. Goldman Sachs forecast it could surge all the way to $12,000 as electrification really gets going—because there are not enough copper mines. Yet, the lack of mining capacity is just one problem for the transition. The other, at least in what is commonly referred to as the collective West, is copper processing capacity. Most of it is in China. Without it, the transition will stumble and possibly collapse. "No China, no transition," Wood Mackenzie said…