Copper. It's not just for drinking mint cocktails, and a copper economic indicator is now muddled.

I'm David Brancaccio. Copper has surged in the last few weeks to its highest price in about 10 months.

Some see high copper as a leading indicator signaling growth, but this time it's complicated.

Here's Marketplace's Henry Epp. Copper is generally a

good indicator because it's used all over the economy. In factories, houses, electronics, street lights,

says Chris Barry at House Mountain Partners. The next time you're on an airplane at night and you're

coming in for a landing and you see any lights or anything like that, every single one

of those lights is working because of the electrical conductivity of copper.

So if the economy is growing and rebuilding more, we'll need more copper, except something

else is going on right now.

In this specific case, I don't believe that copper is acting as a leading indicator.

Ian Lang teaches mineral economics at the Colorado School of Mines.

What's mostly driving copper prices now is the threat of tariffs, he says.

As companies try to navigate changing import tax policy, they're stocking up on copper.

It's just more because we don't really know what's going

to happen. Let me maybe try to buy some and hold it just in case. In the longer term, copper prices

could keep rising, regardless of whether the Trump administration raises tariffs on the metal,

says Chris Berry, because more of the economy is electrifying. You need a lot of copper to affect the energy transition, right?

You need a lot of copper for data centers.

Demand from those industries, he says, could keep copper prices higher for years to come.

I'm Henry App for Marketplace.

We're also covering London's Heathrow Airport, which will remain closed to flights for at least the next 10 hours after a fire at an electrical substation there, air travel the vast livestock show and rodeo that wraps up in Houston on Sunday.

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