In a historic move, the Trump Administration added copper and silver to the US critical minerals list last November, potentially setting the stage for a new US Strategic Silver Reserve.

On December 8^th, the G7 Finance Ministers held a call discussing export controls on critical minerals, ahead of China’s move to enact export controls on silver beginning Jan 1, 2026.

Now that the Trump Admin has moved to add silver to its critical minerals list, it appears that a race for silver between China and the US is on.  

The question now needs to be asked- what happens to silver availability & prices if President Trump decides to reacquire a strategic stockpile of silver?



Today’s traders & PM investors may not even be aware that the United States Government held a Strategic Stockpile of physical silver for over 100 years.

The US Strategic Silver Reserve began in the 1800’s, and exceeded 3 BILLION oz at its peak in 1942.

Read that again, slowly.

3 BILLION OUNCES of physical silver were held as a Strategic Reserve Asset by the US Gov’t.

By the 1980’s the 3 BILLION oz reserve had declined to 165 MILLION oz of silver.

In 1981, the Reagan Administration decided to liquidate the remainder of the US’ silver stockpile.

The Administration stated the strategic silver stockpile would be liquidated in order to fight the Hunt Brothers’ attempts to corner the silver market, as well as to raise funds to acquire cobalt & bauxite for the Defense Department.

The Defense Logistics Agency sold approximately 1 million oz of silver / week through public auctions beginning in 1981 to drive down silver prices- after the Hunt Brothers’ silver acquisitions had driven the price from $6/ oz to $49.45 in 1980.

By 2002, the US Silver Reserve was completely depleted.
Not coincidentally, silver bottomed just prior to this around $4/oz, & began a major secular bull market.

Silver prices have risen over 2,287% since, approximately coinciding with the end of the US Strategic Silver sales.

As most silver investors are aware of, silver has been in a structural supply deficit for most of the past 2 decades, as global physical silver supplies continue to dwindle.

The deficit has been driven by industrial applications for silver, particularly in tech, solar, electric vehicles, medical, and photography fields.

The annual silver deficit rose to 17% in 2024, according to the Silver Institute, an astonishing figure for a globally traded commodity. Investment demand for silver has also been growing at massive rates, although futures trading, derivatives, and paper products such as the SLV have prevented investment demand from completely overwhelming physical silver supply and breaking the market.

However, there have been signs that stress is growing in the market.
Shortages of investment silver products have become increasingly more common over the past few years, with retail premiums on US Silver Eagle coins nearly 100% of silver spot prices at one point. In the aftermath of the market chaos during the COVID era, and now once again in early 2026, even 1,000 oz good delivery bars have experienced shortages in the retail market.

Silver lease rates have also been signaling distress/ tightness in the silver market, as shorts scramble to find physical silver to borrow to fulfill contracts. Lease rates exploded past 35% in October, as silver prices broke through $50/ oz to set a new all-time nominal high of $54.47 on October 17.

As silver prices have broken out to new all-time highs above $95/oz in early 2026, silver lease rates have remained elevated, hovering around 8-9% the past few months in London.

Even with annual US mine output at 1,100 metric tons (35.4 Million oz), the US still imported 64% of its silver consumption in 2024.  Not only does the US face a massive deficit of raw silver material, it also faces a massive shortage of smelting/ refining capacity. 

With such a drastic national supply deficit for a now once again “critical mineral”, the industry is concerned about what US tariffs or export restrictions could mean for global silver supplies & prices.

New US tariffs on silver are possible, but not likely in our opinion due to silver’s new critical mineral status.  All those millions of ounces hauled across the pond from London to NYC in 2025 to avoid Trump Tariffs was for nought- and the US is now massively exporting silver back across the pond to London (1,392 tons in October alone!) as the LBMA’s “free float” silver has reportedly reached dangerously low levels. 

The Trump Administration has already moved to begin addressing the silver refining issue in the US, as the US Department of War announced plans with JPMorgan January 5th to build a $7.4 BILLION state of the art smelting facility in Tennessee to boost US access to critical minerals, including silver. 
https://silvertrade.com/news/precious-metals/silver-news/were-in-a-metals-war-us-dept-of-war-jpm-to-build-us-silver-refinery-to-process-latam-metals/

US Export Restrictions on silver however, are certainly on the table. (In fact, we suspect that coming US Export Restrictions on silver may have been the subject of the G7 Finance Ministers’ December 8 call on critical minerals)

Export restrictions would be the equivalent of a NUCLEAR detonation on the LBMA, as London has already been experiencing severe issues sourcing adequate supplies of physical silver.  The market experienced a small taste of this over the past week as Trump announced (and then unannounced) 10% tariffs on the UK, which saw silver prices immediately spike $5 on the announcement.  

These are not normal times.

China has launched a massive atypical World War against the West- but particularly America.

This war is not being fought with bullets, tanks, & bombs, but rather with biological agents, Islamic immigration to weaken from within, fentanyl, & most importantly, with financial weapons of mass destruction.

President Trump recognized that America was under attack by the Red Dragon, & is fighting back.

Trump’s tariffs were particularly directed at China.

The Dragon is fighting back with every financial weapon at its disposal, including dumping US Treasuries, hoarding physical gold & silver bullion, and just this month, adding silver to its list of tightly controlled exports.

China’s shot across the proverbial bow in the silver market is what led to President Trump’s quick response on November 6th adding 10 minerals including silver, copper, coal, & uranium to the US Critical Minerals List.

This is likely just the first step in the Trump Administration’s response to China.

Export restrictions on these minerals are likely next, as Trump fully understands China’s attempted play, and responds in a tit-for-tat like manner.

This will likely not end merely with export restrictions however.
Trump is certainly financially savvy enough to fully understand where this is leading, and we expect him to quickly come to the realization and conclusion that a Strategic Silver Reserve Stockpile is once again absolutely necessary if the US is to survive and win a Financial/Economic World War with the Red Dragon.

The implications of such a move cannot be overstated.

As discussed in the introduction, silver prices declined from the Hunt Brothers’ top of $49/oz down to $3-$4/oz in the late 1990’s – in no small part due to the liquidation of the US’ Strategic Silver Stockpile which dumped a million oz of silver a week onto the market.

Silver prices then reversed this decline, entered a long term secular bull market, & have climbed to $95 in the 2.5 decades since the US Silver Stockpile was depleted due to ongoing structural supply deficits.

If the Trump Administration left silver alone, we would expect silver’s bull market to continue for the foreseeable future (we don’t have time in this article to investigate other factors such as US debt crisis, or even the gold to silver ratio, and how much room silver has to run currently simply based on reversion to historical GSR averages- but silver’s explosive move through $95/oz is an indication of the fundamentals already propelling the silver market).


Can you imagine what will occur with silver prices when the Trump Administration decides to fire back at the Red Dragon, and announces the creation of a new US Strategic Silver Reserve??

Try to imagine the implications for the physical silver market if such a reserve were created with the goal of 100 million oz.

Then realize that Trump always does things Big League (or BIGLY as the MSM intentionally misrepresented his phrase).

100 million oz may be too conservative of an estimate for a US Strategic Silver Reserve based on the historical size of the US Reserve.  250 or even 500 million oz is entirely possible (Now the sourcing of that amount of physical silver is another story entirely).

If we had to guess however, 1 Billion ounces sounds like a nice round number that Donald Trump would like– particularly if Trump discovers that the US Strategic Silver Reserve once stood at 3 Billion oz.

What would a 1 Billion oz US Strategic Silver Reserve mean to the global silver supply?

TOTAL silver inventories in the LBMA sit at 790 million oz. LBMA Free Float silver is MUCH LOWER.
TOTAL silver inventories in the COMEX (registered & eligible) currently sit just north of 422 million oz.

TOTAL silver inventories in China’s vaults (SGE & SHFE) sit at 35 million oz- down 15 million oz in just the past couple of months!

A 1 Billion oz US Strategic Silver Reserve would suck up every last ounce of silver in the LBMA & SGE/SHFE!

It could only be done gradually via supply – which means gov’t confiscation of every silver mine in America. Only there is a big problem.
Well, rather multiple big problems.

Most silver is not mined in primary silver mines. Most silver is mined as a biproduct/ secondary metal in primary gold, copper, lead, zinc mines. The second big problem is that total US annual silver production is only 35 million oz.

In order to rebuild even a moderately sized US Strategic Reserve (100 M oz), the Federal Gov’t would have to nationalize every last ounce of US Silver production for 3 years.

Three years of every ounce of US silver production just to build up a reserve of 100 million oz! To build up a reserve of 1 Billion oz, it would take nationalizing the entire US Silver Production for 30 years!

30 years is an unacceptable timeline for Trump in an ongoing financial war with China.

Time is of the essence.
Not only must the US acquire the silver, it must beat China to it.

If the Trump Administration attempted to instead acquire the silver on the open market, it would take nearly every ounce in the LBMA, COMEX, SGE, & SHFE combined!!

Even the attempt would send SEISMIC SHOCKWAVES through the silver market, & would certainly send silver prices EXPONENTIALLY HIGHER – even if only a small amount of a strategic reserve was attempted to be acquired via the open market.

This doesn’t even account for China’s actions- which would immediately respond to any move by Trump and would also scramble to obtain every ounce of silver in the world.

Trump’s recent move in Venezuela, & his current obsession with Greenland, Mexico, and Canada make much more sense when viewed through the lens of understanding that the US & China are actively engaged in a Financial WW3 centered on COMMODITIES- of which SILVER is one of THE MAIN PLAYERS. 

We are still in the early stages of this Financial WW3 between China & the US.

You don’t own enough physical gold and silver.

(We are not financial advisors, and this is not investment advice; just a high level look at the events in the Financial war between the US & China, & how things may play out in the coming months and years.
Plan accordingly.)