The past year began with a promise from President Donald Trump to deliver a future of “peace through strength” by unleashing America’s fossil fuel supplies.

To judge by the direction of commodity prices, the opposite is happening. That’s because the hottest metals as the year ends are the ones most indelibly associated with the mass electrification that is making coal, oil and gas increasingly redundant across the world.

The arrival of the revanchist Trump administration was seen as an opportunity to demonstrate fossil fuels’ indispensability to the world. It didn’t work out that way.Credit: Bloomberg

Silver pushed north of $US80 a troy ounce for the first time in history this week, capping a rise of 18 per cent over the past week. Copper also hit a record, with a 6.3 per cent gain taking it as high as $US5.92 a pound.

The two metals are indispensable for electrical systems. Every wire, cable, motor and motherboard in your house contains copper, the best reasonably affordable electrical conductor. Many of them also carry a smaller amount of silver, the most effective conductor of all but one whose high prices typically confine it to thin films printed onto key contact points.

The solar industry, in particular, has become a key silver consumer, using about a fifth of the world’s supply. Electric........

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