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Revising our forecasts as COVID-19 effects linger

We had previously assumed that any coronavirus-related hit to metals demand in Q1 would be made up in subsequent quarters. But that now seems unlikely. As a result, we are lowering our year-end price forecasts for most base metals. However, and perhaps somewhat counterintuitively, we have raised our forecasts for iron ore and Chinese steel prices. That’s largely because we expect a significant ramp-up in infrastructure spending in China once the virus is brought under control.

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