Copper supply and demand

The copper price is dependant on supply and demand.

• The demand curve slopes down: if prices go down, people buy more copper.
• The supply curve slopes up: if prices go up, miners will produce more copper. 

The supply curve for copper is given below. As you can see, the copper price is today at $4.5/lb, which is way higher than the cost to produce copper. This means that we are at maximum mine production. Supply is inelastic. A small increase in demand will increase the price of copper exponentially. Copper recycling will probably add some supply as well, which is not taken into account in this chart.

Updated 2019

As a comparison, uranium is only at the middle of the cost curve ($30/lb). Which means uranium will not have an exponential rise, because a higher uranium price will add extra mine production to the supply.

Copper demand and supply point to a deficit.