Metals markets hasn’t been the same since U.S. President Donald Trump launched an investigation into metal imports back in February, triggering a new front in his protectionist trade campaign. The sweeping tariffs that followed — dubbed “Liberation Day” measures by the White House — have dramatically reconfigured global metal supply chains, creating a curious split: a glut in the U.S. paired with scarcity elsewhere.

At the halfway point of 2025, the London Metal Exchange (LME) benchmark for copper is set to close out the first half of the year up 12%, second only to tin’s wild surge. The broader LME complex, however, continues to reel from the aftershocks of Trump’s tariff blitz, as geopolitical volatility combines with industrial shifts to paint a complex outlook for base metals.

India and Oman are nearing the finalization of negotiations on a trade agreement aimed at facilitating the exchange of goods and services between the two countries. This agreement, known as the comprehensive economic partnership agreement, has seen substantial progress, with consensus…

Xi Jinping faces an eerily familiar but structurally more difficult challenge than in 2015, when China last escaped deflation through a one-two punch of capacity cuts plus an enormous property-led stimulus. Today, only the first part of that playbook, the crackdown on overcapacity, is being used, while the second part, a massive demand boost, has so far been absent.

The contrast with a decade ago is striking. In 2015–16, China didn’t just curb excess supply in steel, coal and construction materials. It also engineered a property boom through the “shantytown redevelopment program”, channeling more than 3 trillion yuan in cheap credit to local governments and households.