Why Did Freeport-McMoRan Stock Drop On Doubts Over A Tariff It Would Gain From?

Freeport-McMoRan (FCX) stock fell 6.6% on Thursday to close at $71.21, while the S&P 500 slipped 0.6%. Copper sold off on surging yields and on reports that the White House has yet to decide on copper tariffs, raising concern the plan could be dropped over worries about higher manufacturing costs. That doubt lands on the part of Freeport that management says a tariff would help: its US business.

Freeport Went Down With Copper And The Miners

The selling was aimed at copper rather than at how Freeport runs its mines. Southern Copper (SCCO) fell 7.2% in the same session, so the market marked down copper miners as a group. Gold and silver fell, too.

Even after Thursday, the shares sit at about double their 52-week low of $34.96, a climb carried by copper’s rally. Revenue did not do the lifting: Freeport took in $25.87 billion over the past twelve months, up just 0.2% from a year earlier. What investors have been paying for is copper’s outlook, and Thursday’s news was about copper.

And Freeport’s US Business Is The One A Tariff Would Help

In July, management said all of Freeport’s US sales are priced on the Comex. If a tariff opens up a premium there, its US copper could fetch more than it gets internationally. The idea then under review was a tariff on copper cathodes phased in from 2027, and no decision had been made.

That US business is growing. It was Freeport’s biggest earnings contributor through the first half of 2026, and mining rates at Morenci, its flagship US mine, ran 30% above their five-year average in the second quarter of 2026. Management sees potential for a 60% increase in US copper production over the coming years.

Part of that growth is a leach initiative to recover more copper from existing stockpiles, including a Morenci pilot testing heated leaching solution in them. The CEO cited that growth and the Comex pricing in saying a tariff would make Freeport a big beneficiary.

So Owning Freeport Means Taking A View On Copper And The White House

Freeport is highly leveraged to the copper price, by management’s own account. The CFO’s model puts each 10-cent-a-pound change in copper at about $390 million of EBITDA a year, using the average of 2027 and 2028. Management controls neither that price nor the tariff decision.

What management has more say over is volume. Production rates at the Grasberg Block Cave in Indonesia doubled from an April average of 34,000 tons a day to 69,000 in June 2026, as Freeport works to restore large-scale production there. The CFO expects second-half 2026 copper sales to run more than 20% above the first half.

So Thursday’s drop came from a copper sell-off on surging yields and an undecided tariff. If you own Freeport, you own a view on copper and the tariff, and the operating test is whether that second-half sales step-up arrives.

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