Zambia: Copper country

Business Daily

BBC

News, Business

4.4 • 796 Ratings

🗓️ 29 July 2025

⏱️ 17 minutes

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Summary

The African nation relies heavily on its copper industry and exports – the football team is even nicknamed Chipolo-polo - The Copper Bullets.

Now, US President Donald Trump has announced a new 50% tariff on copper imports from early August.

We explore the impact this could have on major copper producers, like Zambia and neighbouring DR Congo.

Price volatility could affect earnings, but some companies are saying the long-term outlook still looks strong because of global demand for copper in data centres and EVs.

Presenter: Will Bain Producer: Hannah Bewley

(Image: Workers prepare casting units at the Mufulira refinery, operated by Mopani Copper Mines Plc, in Mufulira, Zambia in May 2022. Credit: Getty Images)

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hello, I'm Will Bain and welcome to Business Daily on the BBC World Service.
0:05.4	Today, we're in an African copper capital.
0:08.4	Copper is the lifeblood of Zambia's economy.
0:11.0	Bit of a worry then if in a press conference about tariffs,
0:14.2	US President Donald Trump says this.
0:16.7	Today we're doing copper.
0:18.0	I believe the tariff and copper are going to make it 50%.
0:20.7	50%. With massive taxes on imported copper to the United States set to come into effect in the coming days,
0:27.5	Zambia will be our case study today as we try to work out what a 50% tariff on a commodity the global economy is hooked on might mean for the industry.
0:36.4	The impact on the market really will be huge.
0:39.7	What we're likely to see is improved availability outside of the US, which will wait on copper
0:44.8	prices.
0:45.6	And for the thousands of businesses around the world, we've never been down in mine in their
0:49.7	lives, but could still be collateral in a new trade war frontier.
0:53.9	We've had this in 2014, 2015, where the copper prices were down.
0:58.0	We did see that 50% of our business did disappear.
1:01.6	So what would President Trump's copper tariffs mean for an economy like Zabias?
1:06.5	That's Business Daily right here on the BBC World Service.
1:12.6	Wow, without copper, there would be no Zambia.
1:15.6	That's basically the thing.
1:17.3	That's international development economist Trevor Sumumba,
1:20.4	who's always on the move around the African continent for work,
	...

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