By Tom Stundza
Purchasing, 2/14/2008
Copper buyers will have less trouble sourcing the red metal this year as a succession of bad news on the economy – including poor bank earnings, falling construction rates and rising expectations that overall gross domestic product (GDP) growth will slow – is driving many copper market watchers to revise their 2008 copper demand forecasts.
U.S. copper consumption for construction and manufacturing has been sliding for the past two years. Last year, the U.S. and Canada consumed an estimated 5.4 billion lbs of copper, a 3% decline from the year before, and new outlooks for 2008 see further slippage.
“Copper demand is probably falling 8% per annum in the U.S.,” says Jon Bergtheil, head of global metals strategy at the J.P. Morgan Securities offices in London. Not quite as bearish is Larry Edelson at Weiss Research in Jupiter, Fla., who forecasts that refined copper consumption will fall by 3.3% this year. Still, their views now erase earlier forecasts of a 4% rebound in 2008.
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