US copper imports from Congo hit record 53,290 tonnes in July

US imports of refined copper from the Democratic Republic of Congo reached a record 53,290 tonnes in July, a single month's volume that exceeded everything America imported from Congo throughout 2024.

American manufacturers were accepting more Congolese copper as its quality improved and because it could cost less than brands already approved for delivery through the US futures market. China, Congo's largest copper customer, saw its own purchases decline 4.3% during the first seven months of 2026, even as its overall dominance of Congolese output remained intact.

The payoff from a year of dealmaking

The record import figure represented the clearest evidence yet that the series of agreements struck over the previous eight months — Gécamines' first copper shipment to the US in January, the subsequent fivefold expansion of planned volumes to 500,000 tonnes in April, and the broader US-DRC critical-minerals partnership underpinning them — was translating into measurable trade flows rather than remaining diplomatic promises.

A gradual, not wholesale, shift

Even so, the scale of the shift should not be overstated: China's purchases, while down slightly, still vastly outweighed the volumes now flowing to the United States, and the Chinese-operated mines at Tenke Fungurume, Kamoto and elsewhere continued to account for the large majority of Congolese copper production. What the record import figure did confirm was that the DRC had successfully established a credible, price-competitive alternative sales channel to the US market, giving Kinshasa additional negotiating leverage with both Washington and Beijing as it sought to extract better terms from each without becoming overly dependent on either. US buyers, for their part, gained a second major supply source beyond traditional partners in Latin America and Africa's Copperbelt states, at a time when domestic smelting and refining capacity in the United States remained limited relative to the country's own consumption needs.

Sources

• Business Insider Africa: US buys record 53,290 tonnes of discounted Congo copper as shipments to China fall, 07 Sept 2026

Photo: Refined copper cathode of the kind exported from the DRC's copperbelt. Niklitov, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0.