Silver Hits 14-Year Highs at $38 as Market 'Scrambles' for Supply
Friday, 7/11/2025 15:51
The PRICE of SILVER leapt on Friday in London, bursting through $37 and then $38 per Troy ounce to hit new 14-year highs as US President Trump's shock trade tariff on industrial metal copper spurred a 'scramble' to import silver into the world's largest economy.
Gold prices also rose, adding 0.6% for the week at $3351 per Troy ounce.
But for
industrially-useful silver − and reflecting the
fallout from Trump's 50% tariff on copper − the gap between New York's most-active Comex contract and London spot bullion shot above 65 cents per Troy ounce.
More than 3 times its level last week-end, that 'arb' will suck bullion across the Atlantic.
London's midday auction saw silver clear at $37.50 per Troy ounce, 1.7% above last Friday's fixing and the highest benchmark price since 22 September 2011.
That was on the way down from re-touching its 1980 peak of
$50 silver in April 2011, a level reached on the way up in just 5 weeks from current prices.
Following Friday's 12 noon auction, silver spot trading in London today saw the price of bullion vault through $38 per ounce, taking its weekly gain to 3.5% in US Dollar terms.
"The [London] market scrambled to borrow silver following two notable waves of silver EFP buying," says a note from London bullion clearer ICBC Standard, referring to Exchange for Physical contracts.
EFPs enable holders of US futures contracts to switch into bullion, and offer an arbitrage profit opportunity to banks and other dealers shipping metal out of London into US storage.
"The search for fresh ounces is aggravated by the ongoing buying of ETFs," ICBCS goes on, "which makes sourcing new supply more challenging."
Silver ETF holdings led by the iShares product (NYSEArca: SLV) have now grown for 9 weeks running, ICBCS says, with June marking "the largest build in percentage terms since January 2021" saw record inflows amid
the short-lived #silversqueeze ramp on social media.
Reflecting this rush for silver in London, short-term lease rates to borrow the metal in its largest and most central market have jumped from 1.7% to 5.3% per annum, the highest since the Trump White House announced its Liberation Day trade tariffs on 2nd April, which
in fact left precious metals exempt from import duty.
"The same situation we saw at the beginning of the year is happening again," says Bruce Ikemizu at the Japan Bullion Market Association.
"The transportation of metal from London to New York is rapidly becoming a reality due to concerns over tariffs."
While Comex gold stockpiles have now shrunk by almost 1/5th from Liberation Day's record level, silver stockpiles are little changed around April's all-time highs, holding close to half-a-billion ounces (497,289 tonnes).
That's equal to more than 7 months of total global silver mining output, enough to meet 2.4 years of all domestic US demand for fabricated silver products.
Like silver, platinum's borrowing costs jumped again Friday, and palladium lease rates also jumped, hitting the highest so far this year close to 2.7% per annum.
Copper itself traded close to Tuesday's all-time highs on US CME futures contracts, pushing the gap over global LME futures to a new record of 25% as prices outside America slipped again on expectations that once Trump's tariff applies from 1st August, killing new imports, availability elsewhere in the world will improve.
Almost 140,000 imperial tons of copper have been added to Comex-approved warehouse stockpiles so far this year, with total US inflows reaching around half-a-million tons according to brokerage StoneX.
"As a result," says StoneX analyst Natalie Scott-Gray, "regional copper markets have been distorted, with material re-routed into the US not just from major trading partners like Canada and Chile, but also from markets of last resort such as the LME and SHFE.
"This has resulted in a significant scarcity of copper units outside of the US...[but] the implementation of higher than expected tariffs is likely to allow LME copper to regain its Dr.Copper status, with prices reflecting the health of the global industrial market, rather than just the risk of US import tariffs, which has been the case for the last few months."
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