Copper Price in the 1970s

Copper began the decade cheap and unsettled. It sat at $0.52 per pound in 1971, the year President Nixon ended the dollar's convertibility to gold, and slipped to $0.51 in 1972 as the industrial world absorbed a wave of currency and commodity volatility. The real move came next. A synchronized global boom, loose monetary policy, and the 1973 oil crisis touched off a broad commodity surge that carried copper to $0.81 in 1973 and then $0.93 in 1974, its peak for the decade in these annual averages. On the London and New York exchanges the spot price roughly tripled between early 1973 and April 1974 before rolling over.

The bust was just as sharp. The deep 1974 to 1975 recession gutted industrial demand, and copper fell hard to $0.56 in 1975, giving back nearly all of the boom's gains. A recovery in world activity in 1976 nudged the price up to $0.64, but the rebound stalled. Copper drifted lower to $0.59 in 1977 and $0.62 in 1978, held down by weak demand and swelling mine output. Only in 1979 did it break out again, jumping to $0.90 as the Iranian revolution triggered a second oil shock and a fresh burst of inflation and commodity buying.

Three forces defined the decade. The first was inflation and the end of Bretton Woods. Once Nixon severed the dollar from gold in 1971, currencies floated and real assets became a hedge, pushing money into metals. The second was the oil shocks. The 1973 embargo by Arab producers roughly quadrupled crude and fed a generalized 1973 to 1974 commodity mania that swept copper up with it, while the 1979 Iranian revolution delivered a second oil crisis that drove the metal from $0.62 to $0.90 in a single year. The third was the ordinary but brutal industrial cycle, seen most clearly in the 1975 crash to $0.56, when recession simply removed the buyers.

The aftermath mattered as much as the price. Copper's nickname, Dr. Copper, reflects how tightly it tracks the real economy, and the 1970s were a stress test of that link. Producers had ramped up capacity during the boom, so when demand faltered the industry faced years of prices sitting below rapidly rising production costs. The result was thin margins, losses at many mining firms, and mounting pressure across the sector for the rest of the decade. The 73 percent rise from $0.52 to $0.90 flattered a decade in which copper mostly ran to stand still, its gains driven by inflation and oil rather than by durable strength in demand.