BBL BHP Group Plc

By Katherine Dunn 

LONDON--Copper prices rose to a one-week high Friday amid signs of Chinese growth, a strike at the world's largest copper mine and talk of tax cuts in the U.S.

The London Metal Exchange three-month copper contract rose by 0.83% to $5,892 per metric ton, the highest price since Feb. 2, in midmorning trade in Europe. The metal pared its gains after trading higher earlier in the morning.

"There's lots of things people can take as positive for [copper] for the time being," said Liz Grant at Sucden in London.

Economic data from China released on Friday showed that both total export and import figures for January were far higher than expected. Exports jumped 7.9% in January from a year earlier, while imports rose 16.7% on year, jumping 3.1% from December. China is the world's largest consumer of copper and base metals.

Friday was also the second day of a union strike at the Escondida mine in northern Chile, which is owned by BHP Billiton Ltd. The mine produces roughly 5% of the world's total copper supply.

"The last couple days the market's been quite strong on the back of the strike in Chile," said Ms. Grant. Copper is up 2.67% so far this week.

Concerns about the Grasberg mine in Indonesia, owned by Freeport-McMoRan Inc., were also hiking supply worries. Freeport is waiting for an export license from the Indonesian government, and has warned it will cut output if it doesn't receive one by midmonth.

Meanwhile, markets were broadly higher on Friday after comments by President Donald Trump on Thursday that a plan to lower business taxes was "ahead of schedule." Mr. Trump said Congress would receive an outline of the plan by the end of the month.

"There's still a lot of optimism about the pro-growth politics in the U.S.," said Nitesh Shah, commodities strategist at ETF Securities in London. Expectations of those policies, paired with strong Chinese speculative demand, helped the copper market rally sharply late last year.

The details of the policy are still scant, Mr. Shah added, and have to be weighed against the impact of more trade barriers on the market.

"It hasn't sunk in just how damaging protectionism will be," he said.

Those bullish factors were outweighing a slightly stronger dollar, which often puts pressure on commodities markets. On Friday, the WSJ Dollar Index, which weighs the dollar against a basket of other currencies, was up 0.07%.

The other base metals were higher on Friday. Aluminum was up 1.05% at $1,871 per metric ton, lead was up 1.93% at $2,372 per ton, zinc was up 1.94% at $2,883.50 per ton, nickel was up 1.56% at $10,445 per ton, and tin was up 0.76% at $19,270 per ton.

Mark Magnier and Riva Gold contributed to this article.

Write to Katherine Dunn at Katherine.Dunn@wsj.com

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

February 10, 2017 06:46 ET (11:46 GMT)

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