CFTC to Review US Aluminum Pricing Mechanisms, Chair Selig Says

A US regulator scrutinising how aluminum is priced is a notable shift toward the plumbing of commodity benchmarks rather than the metal itself, and the timing matters: with LME prices at a four-year high and US consumers paying a steep premium, the gap between global and domestic pricing is the real pressure point. Manufacturers and any tokenised or contract-based commodity markets built on these benchmarks are the most exposed to whatever reforms emerge. Whether the review produces genuinely new contract structures — and whether transparency improves enough to narrow that premium — is the open question.