With American silver investment demand continuing to be very strong this year, the U.S. is importing even more silver. The U.S. market is now acquiring metal from…
by Steve St Angelo of SRSrocco Report
With American silver investment demand continuing to be very strong this year, the U.S. is importing even more silver. The U.S. market is now acquiring metal from Turkey, Russia, Uzbekistan, and Kazakhstan to access more silver. While the U.S. receives most of its silver from Mexico and Canada, it imported nearly 10 million oz of silver from those four countries.
According to the USGS Silver Mineral Industry Surveys, total U.S. silver imports reached nearly 4,000 metric tons (mt) in the first seven months of the year. The chart below shows the cumulative increase in U.S. silver imports from January to July 2021.
From Jan-July 2021, the U.S. imported 126 million oz (Moz) of silver at a total value of $3.43 billion… with an average spot price of $27.22. What a difference from the average price last year when the U.S. silver imports for Jan-July 2020 were 118 Moz at an average of $18.68.
With the big price surge of silver in July 2020, the U.S. imported a record 1,060 mt or 34 Moz in just one month. This pushed up the total cumulative U.S. silver imports to 3,677 mt (118 Moz) versus the 3,920 mt (126 Moz) during the same period this year.
So, where did all this silver come from? As I mentioned at the beginning of the article, most silver comes from the United States’ two closest neighbors, Mexico and Canada. The U.S. imported over 2,000 mt of its silver from Mexico and Canada during the first seven months of 2021. Third place was Switzerland at 465 mt, followed by Poland at 361 mt. These were the four largest sources of U.S. silver imports.
What was interesting this year is that the U.S. acquired silver from Turkey, Russia, Uzbekistan, and Kazakhstan, four countries that it typically doesn’t import from. Turkey was the sixth-largest source at 140 mt, with Kazakhstan, Russia, and Uzbekistan accounting for a total of 157 mt. Thus, these four countries shipped nearly 300 mt or 10 million oz of silver to the United States in just the first seven months of the year.
It will be interesting to see what the U.S. silver imports will be for the remaining months in 2021. With India now importing a lot of silver since September, this could get very interesting as the world begins to wake up that SILVER is one of the few HIGH-QUALITY stores of value.
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