The M&E Dispatch // 093

Wait till they hear what we make our more precious items out of...

Author

Lee Tengum
August 01, 2025

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Hello Everyone,

As we head into the BC Day long weekend, my last one here for a while, I find myself packing boxes and scrolling through Trump’s latest tariff documents like I’m hunting for an Ikea Allen key. Somewhere between “semi-manufactured copper” and “national security,” I realized something: I’m tired.

We’re talking less and less about trade policy and more about performance art.

The U.S. has slapped a 50% tariff on copper products starting today. Not ore. Not concentrate. The fun stuff. Tubes, cables, fittings, the kinds of things that make grids hum and EVs go vroom.

And they did it under Section 232, the same one usually reserved for stuff like military steel and hostile foreign takeovers. Only this time, the hostile actor is… Canada?

Let me get this straight: we’re your #1 supplier of copper, a G7 partner, your favorite northern cottage destination, and now we’re a national security risk?

But wait, there’s more.

Buried further down in the madness is the 35% blanket levy on Canadian imports that don’t qualify under USMCA. A blunt instrument dressed up in trade jargon. So unless your copper widgets were hand-signed by Mark Carney and triple-stamped as North American content, they’re catching flak too.

(Oh, and in case you missed it: these tariffs apply only to the copper portion of finished products, which means importers now need to start doing math like they’re back in high school metal shop, but with lawyers.)

I get it. The goal here is to reshore copper production. Fast. But here's the part that makes me chuckle is they don’t actually have the infrastructure to process or manufacture at the scale they want. Not yet.

So… we’re being punished for helping?

It’s like telling your neighbour to stop mowing your lawn because you’re finally going to buy a mower, even though you don’t have the means to buy one yet.

This isn’t industrial policy. It’s hopes and dreams. Just a step above “thought and prayers” on Facebook and a GoFundme. And yet, somewhere in all this mess, there's a signal worth hearing: the U.S. is dead serious about critical minerals. They’re just not very graceful about it.

So if you're exporting copper, or the kinds of things that touch copper, bend around copper, or even vaguely resemble copper in X-rays, welcome to the spreadsheet era. Every component, every alloy, every “is this pipe 63% or 74%?” is now a line item in the trade wars.

I’m not here to tell you what to do with this. Most of you reading this know more about the copper market than I ever will. But I will say this:

Our money has copper in it… which probably means they don’t want that either.

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I was driving some trash to the dump this week and thanks to our very wet July I noticed it’s a lot greener out than I recall in recent years.

It’s gorgeous.

There’s little to no smoke in the sky, the trees are in full bloom and our cherries have ripened to the sweetest and largest they’ve ever been. What a send off.

It’s an odd place to be when you’re staring down a departure from an area you have called home for 36 of your 43 years on this planet.

T-5 days.

Enjoy the long weekend all.

- Lee

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