➡ In March, China broke its record for the most silver imported in a single month due to increased demand from retail investors and the solar industry. This surge in imports is not expected to continue at the same rate, but it highlights the growing interest in silver as an investment and industrial material. Despite China being the world’s largest silver producer, the demand for silver is outpacing the supply, leading to a deficit.
➡ The demand for silver is expected to grow, with a predicted deficit of 318 million ounces. This is due to factors like increased industrial use, particularly in the electronics industry, and high demand in China. However, there are concerns about potential supply issues, such as China’s vow to reduce overcapacity in the solar sector and the possibility of using copper instead of silver. Despite these challenges, the overall outlook for silver remains positive, with strong demand and potential for growth.
➡ David from a silver company discussed their expanded drilling program, which is exciting news due to the high silver prices. The company is well-funded and plans to increase their drilling, which will likely lead to mine expansions in the future. They aim to grow their resources and production simultaneously, a powerful combination in the mining sector. The company, Kuya, is a sponsor of the Arcadey Economics show, which provides daily gold and silver news.

China just set a record for the most silver they’ve ever imported in a single month, and just wait until you see how much silver they just took down in March. Well, hello there, my friends. Chris Marcus here with you for Arcadia Economics on Monday, April 20th, where, as I mentioned in our intro, China’s silver imports jumped to a record on retail and solar demand in March, and we’re going to dig through that, and a lot of the consequences or ramifications from what is going on there, which I might add is something we’ve been talking about plenty here.

We were talking about this before silver hit $50 last year, we were talking about a four silver hit $121. We were talking about it before silver was down at $18 in 2022, and certainly a very intriguing article. We will look at some of the rather intriguing silver, the actual metal flows that are taking place, so I think you’re in for a treat today. I find what’s happening incredibly exciting and interesting in its own right, and I’ll say that I’m darn glad to be here with you today, where it’s, you know, I guess when we started the channel I was talking about silver’s undervalued manipulation, this, that, yet here we are, the silver price has finally gone up, and you know it’s heavy what is happening in the world in many senses, although truly fascinating in its own right, so I’m honored to be here sharing at least what I am seeing in hopes that that can be helpful for you in navigating the waters of what’s going on out there, and let us start with a quick look at the pricing.

I’m recording about 11am eastern on Monday, and we have the gold futures down $33 at $48.45, see they were down quite a bit more down to $47.56, which obviously when you heard about the news that the latest ceasefire did not last very long and the trade is now closed again, you’re expecting the price to be down based on how it’s traded lately, sure enough it was last night, although it’s really rebounded since then, and I’ll just say I, you know, I got some of these comments after the end of last week where it was saying it laid out why I think it’s unfortunately very difficult to see this getting resolved anytime soon, and a couple people were grilling me in the comments, oh your guest you brought on to talk about Alex Newman last Tuesday, where we went through why we think it’s difficult to see an easy resolution, and people were saying that we had completely missed that, yet I think this came out Friday night, it was at least by Saturday, that the whole agreement had fallen apart, and now we see US seizure of Iranian ship near a Strait of Hormuz cast doubts on fresh ceasefire talks, different reports going around of whether another ship was blown up or not, we’ll leave that aside today because there are a lot of important silver details to focus on, but in any case, that’s why you see the oil price rising up about five bucks today, and gold and silver down, speaking of silver, it is currently at 79.80 in the futures, was down as low as 78.75, and we can pull out the one-week chart so you can get that all in context, not surprising to see silver down, although I would say still pretty encouraging that even less than an hour ago it was back above the $80 level, a little bit below that right now, yet while we wait for that chart to load up, we’ll mention the premium between the COMEX futures, and China is now over $10 at $10.79, because we have the Shanghai futures at $90.58, so here you can see the silver chart, and then on the open silver got down to as low as 78.75, rallying a little bit since then, kind of surprised we didn’t see bigger moves given the way the news broke yet, either case, certainly good news, I find it incredibly encouraging that here we are at just under $80 silver in the context of what’s happening, if nothing else, if you think back a year ago, where we were today, and that not only did we see the spike up, and yes I understand we’re well below the high yet, it didn’t go back down to $50, it got down to $61.20, but continues to bounce up, and I think that’s the biggest takeaway as opposed to 1980 or 2011, where we saw the spike, and then it came back down, I guess you never know what will happen in the future yet given what is happening, and we’ll mention, we’ll hop over to China in just a moment, certainly it seems like we are seeing a new range here, and the fact that the Chinese silver imports just jumped to a record doesn’t, all else being equal, that and the fact that the premium has widened out to almost $11 would not suggest that we’re about to see a reversal of this, I mean if you had to make an even money bet based on what you’re about to hear here, I would take being long myself, again you can decide what fits you the best, and anyway let us dig in because China’s imports of silver surged to an all-time high in March, this demand from retail investors and the country’s solar industry purchased, pushed purchases well above the seasonal average, that’s another thing we’ve been talking about plenty, especially with David Stein of Kuya Silver who mentioned how he was actually contacted by solar panel manufacturers from both China and India, and there’s a degree to which some of this is also being reflected in India as well, but either case you can see that China imported 836 tons last month, compared with the 10-year seasonal average for March, we’ve had 306 tons, so just a touch higher, now there’s an analyst saying the explosive imports is definitely not going to sustain, there’s another comment they had there which I will get to in just a moment, but here import surged to an all-time high in March, now you can see on the chart here, here’s that big 836 number, well in excess of anything that we’ve seen, and that’s pretty darn intriguing because we already have the price at 80, it’s already been to 121, down to 80, we have this spread which, and I know some people still believe that that is because of the VAT, although just to clear that up, let us look at the three-year chart and you can see there was a VAT when silver was up at 50 and that spread was negative, this only started right at the end of last year when the premium surged the day after Christmas, and you can see that on this chart, so we’re not just talking about the VAT here, but conditions explaining why we saw that massive move, took 45 years for silver to get to 50 again, which in its own right was significant, yet after that you had it more than double to 121, and I maintain my belief and won’t go through every piece of data today yet, this is why, and now after that’s happened we’re seeing a surge to double, all right what did we get here, the high 432, so almost double any other data point in the last decade, so you just saw the silver demand in China double even while there’s already tightness, so demand was, why? Why did this happen? Well demand was bolstered by retail investors piling into small silver bars as an alternative to gold, and solar manufacturers front-running production ahead of removal of the export tax rebates on April 1st, and certainly that could very well play quite a bit into it because the solar industry consumes about a fifth of the annual supply.

Well here’s what’s interesting, if we look at the silver institute numbers, they had despite more silver installation growth in 2025 you had the of which photo voltaics, did that come down from 197 to 186 forecast to go down to 151, yet I guess I wonder if that this number alone would change that forecast because that’s a big boy, and yes do I think a lot of it could be related to that rebate, sure still you didn’t have that last year, so that just put 2026, and again this isn’t just solar but net demand, other case here let’s look at the total industrial demand came from 679 in 24 to 657 in 25, and then down to 639 forecast for 26, and in terms of the industrial demand we just see it surged past not only what happened last year but in any year, although Zu Ji Wu says the explosive imports definitely not going to sustain, that part I could accept, okay you want to tribute most of that to the rebate, that’s fine, although here there’s no long-term demand supply and balance for silver given that China is the world’s biggest silver producer, I agree that they’re producing a lot of that silver, although still when you look at the net numbers even with that drop off that was forecast or that was recognized last year and forecast for this year, you still did have a deficit, they have it at 40.3 million ounces in 2025 and expecting it to grow in 2026, additionally if you include the ETFs where a lot of silver did go in, rather than just a 40 million ounce deficit on the lower side of the last couple of years, you jump to a 318 million ounce deficit which would have been a record and you know again if they’re forecasting 30 million ounces in this year, lately silver has actually been coming out of the ETF so this is always a big number to pay attention to and which we do here on a regular basis, so a great reason to hit the subscribe button and the notification bell or even better yet go over to our kdeconomics.com where you put your email name in there and then you just get an email whenever a show is released because we do keep track of that and that has a huge impact on the overall demand number.

Some people like to strip out the ETFs because it’s the flows go differently depending on what the institutions are doing, I think there’s relevance in both numbers, gives you a fuller picture of the whole situation, yet when you count the ETFs I mean you could say maybe the metal goes in and out quickly but still if metal goes in and it actually goes in it has to come from somewhere, so I look to this bottom number in terms of where the total silver from the finite supply actually came, yet back to our friend here that is quoted in Bloomberg where they say there’s no long-term demand supply imbalance for silver, in addition to even with the lower industrial demand giving silver institute numbers that show that while the deficit might be smaller that would still be an imbalance.

You also have this report from Oxford Economics that they did on behalf of the silver institute back in November of 2023 and you see their executive summary they were looking at what are the projections for the next 10 years and they came back with between 2023 and 2033 we forecast the global output of end users of industrial silver will increase by 46 percent in real terms. This reflects predictions of a particularly rapid growth in the output of the electrical and electronics application industry of which they forecast that to grow by 55 percent over the next decade especially in the middle of a drone war and seeing budgets for military increase in general.

I would not agree with this part there’s no long-term demand supply and balance for silver I think it’s already there hey maybe things change maybe there’s a lot of thrifting and solar and that counts for that but so I can’t guarantee what will happen in the future but I wouldn’t say it doesn’t exist entirely already exist there’s a good chance it could get bigger but we’ll see what the next 10 years of life brings so they do mention strong demand push Chinese prices well above international benchmarks prompting traders to ship silver from all over the world to cash in on the arbitrage opportunity and that’s what’s interesting is that ARB has been there we’re going on completing month four now so not just a little bit and not just a little amount the difference in fact as I mentioned there you can see it up to 1090 and we look back here if you take a look at 2026 it’s actually been getting bigger at least this month and back into March so also interesting they mentioned how the gold and silver prices have pulled back as the Iran war has raised concerns about inflation and that touches on something we’ve discussed before where normally you would think more inflation the value of gold and silver going up although because that means the Fed theoretically is less likely to cut rates or initiate QE which that I think they’re actually on track to have to cut rates and do QE in the face of the inflation given the economic damage that’s being done and I might add now you have that darn straight is closed again and we hear the Bob L.

Mandab straight is being looked at being closed so anyway a lot happening there in already fragile conditions and industrial use in China faces pressure with Beijing’s vow to curb over capacity in the solar sector and could see substitution we’ve talked about that before as well and that certainly could happen it’s you’ve already seen a massive thrifting effort talks of companies using copper instead of silver and there I don’t know if it’s quite as straightforward and I continue to hear the main concern is that if you’re doing a 20-year warranty on those panels and you put copper instead of silver that could be a real problem but in either case that’s why I wanted to highlight the Oxford report because even with that said they talk about the other factors that are involved and you can find this if you google basically Oxford 10-year forecast industrial silver interesting report and anyway in terms of some of the flows we see the Chinese inventory is actually a little higher than they had been up to 26.284 I think they got down to just under 20 they were out 21 and then went up to 23 so some metal back in there for now yet still amazingly on the low side and again just as context here is the LBMA vault holdings and the green part is the free float and when they had their crisis back in October got down to 141 they are currently at about 265 million ounces so more silver in the free float in London and here you can see their vault holdings the total this includes the free float and what’s held for the ETFs came up quite a bit throughout 2025 had a dip then back a little higher currently at 883 with about 265 of that underpinning the London market terms of the COMEX we continue to see silver come out you see there’s a little ridge where it took a sharper drop down and basically what’s interesting is that we’re about back to where we started last year depending on exactly when you measure it but here somewhere in that curve I guess maybe around January Trump comes in I mean we knew the tariffs were going to be a thing before he came in yet here’s where the metal came in we’re about back to where we started and for those of you who like the registered we see that continues to go down down to 77.1 million ounces take a look at the long term and still a large amount of metal in one sense although the fact that China has had its issue and it would sure seem likely that a good chunk of this silver that’s come out of here has gone over to China which is another thing that David Stein and I talked about back in January where if you have that premium are people going to capture it and that seems to be exactly what has happened so fascinating historic times in the silver market plus we had mentioned on Friday how there was this bizarre thing going on in India where banks had halted gold and silver imports because they’re waiting for a government license yet without imports supply shortages will emerge and premiums will rise this trader was saying remember that it was India that went into the shortage in October that caused London’s shortage and to address their shortage it had to get metal from the COMEX and China which led to China being on the verge of a shortage with the enhanced premiums and here we had India because there was no word from the government on the licensing yet we did find an update on that over the weekend India belatedly lists banks authorized to import gold and silver and we see that about five tons of gold and eight tons of silver were stuck without clearance and it looks like now that is able to go through so at least what we mentioned on Friday where this had created conceivably the possibility of generating another shortage in India finally the government woke up on that one so that has been resolved but anyway part of a fascinating environment in the metals and then in the background of that we see that after the Supreme Court below the Trump administration launches a 166 billion tariff refund portal so again Trump had said that we were just outright screwed if the Supreme Court ruled against the US and that it would take years to figure out even who to pay although now we have cape on the case fast tracking the refunds so I guess maybe it was in complete Armageddon if that did not go through and money coming out from that and then our last note in terms of the mining sector mentioned David Stein of Kuya Silver several times because it was quite exciting to see him on the front lines hearing from some of these groups in both China and India that were trying to lock in his production because Kuya Silver is a silver producer we first started having David on the show back in 2021 when they were still moving towards production now they’re in production getting calls from these groups trying to buy the silver that they end up with and one of the things we talked about with David in our last call was their expanded drill program which again again one of the things to keep in mind is that even though silver is off its highs from January this is still a very large silver price really good news for silver companies producers explorers juniors as well and David did talk about the drill program that they have ongoing and let’s take a little listen to that here we did announce an expansion of our drill program recently you know that’s just because in this market and given how well financed we’re on the cost of you know having positive cash flow from the mine after just you know starting it up very recently we decided that our current drill program was too meager was insufficient so we expanded it and we’re very excited much of that there is some drilling going on right now much of the expanded program will happen in the second half of the year and you know we’re really sitting on a big property with lots of extensions of these veins at depth other vein systems that we found that have not been drilled yet on the property so we have you know years and years and years to drill here and and expand our resources and then that you know likely will lead to mine expansions down the road as well so very very exciting time that now we’re in the position finally after many years of kind of struggling we’re finally in the position where we can really go hog wild and you know drill off a lot of resources while we’re also ramping up the mine producing more and more silver making more cash flow from the mine and looking at how to expand that as well but what i found in my career was that if you can find a company that is growing resources and production at the same time that is the most powerful combination that you’ll come across in the mining sector other than maybe like just a kind of a lottery ticket freak discovery but those are you know very hard to predict and very risky so i like taking less risk and still having you know 5x 10x 20x upside and i think when you’ve got a company like kuya that’s growing production and growing resources at the same time that’s really the sweet spot well thank you to david and thank you to kuya for being a proud sponsor of the arcadey economics show where we bring you the gold and silver news on a daily basis hopefully you enjoyed today’s show if so leave a comment in the comments field below always nice to hear from you and in terms of some more detailed insight into what has created this issue in china david was recently on the show and to find out more about what he said and what he’s seeing on the front lines which he won’t hear very easily anywhere else well just click on the video that’s coming your way now
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