US $2.53 per lb copper priceHopefully they can make progress with the permit situation soon.
It`s not clear where the silver price will go. US and global inflation is likely contributing to the increase, and inflation will pick up further over the next several years. However, the US and global economies could crash also (maybe likely to crash). I think the inflation might show down if there is a crash, but it will continue forward shortly afterwards, after the US begin printing huge amounts of dollar again and reduce interest rates again (maybe even go negative like Europe and Japan) to try to stimulate growth. The efforts will just create more bubbles.
At the end of the day, we are probably looking at stagflation - low growth and high inflation environment.
I think the inflation under any of these situations could keep the copper price somewhat inflated. Typically, governments rates the interest rates to try to keep inflation in check, like the US did in 1980 (they raised the interest rate to almost 20% in 1980 to stop the runaway inflation). The US short-term interest rate is .25 - .50% - in normal times it is around 5.0%. Increasing it to even 3 or 2, or maybe even 1 percent could crash the economy. They cannot go back to 5.0% without putting the world into a deep depression. As such do have to tools in the toolbox to stop runaway inflation like they did in 1980.
As a result of all this, the inflation pressures may keep a reasonable bottom under the copper price, while maybe lifting it higher.