BEIJING, July 10 (Reuters) - The prices of copper and most other base metals trended lower on Wednesday after China's inflation data disappointed and as a firmer U.S. dollar weighed.
Three-month copper on the London Metal Exchange slid 0.2% at $9,853 per metric ton by 0726 GMT, while the most-traded August copper contract on the Shanghai Futures Exchange fell 1% to 79,580 yuan ($10,937.78) a ton.
China's consumer prices grew for a fifth month in June but missed expectations, while producer price deflation persisted.
The consumer price index (CPI) in June rose 0.2% from a year earlier, against a 0.3% uptick in May, the slowest in three months, data from the National Bureau of Statistics showed on Wednesday, below a 0.4% increase forecast in a Reuters poll.
Also weighing on the market was the firmer dollar after Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell struck a cautious tone on how soon interest rate cuts would come.
A stronger dollar makes it more expensive to buy the greenback-priced commodity.
Meanwhile, China produced 1.01 million tons of refined copper in June, down slightly from May because of smelter maintenance. However, the number came higher than expected and was up 9.5% from a year earlier, according to a survey by Shanghai Metals Market.
Top smelters in China
eyed some improvements
in the tightness of raw material supply in the third quarter.
LME aluminium was 0.5% lower at $2,483.50 a ton, nickel shed 0.2% at $17,110, zinc slipped 0.3% at $2,923, and tin little moved at $34,360, while lead dipped 0.1% to $2,191.50.
SHFE aluminium lost 1.5% to 20,100 yuan a ton, lead was down 1.1% at 19,430 yuan, nickel fell 2.9% to 133,740 yuan, zinc declined 1.3% to 24,120 yuan, and tin nudged 0.1% lower to 277,240 yuan.
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($1 = 7.2757 Chinese yuan renminbi) (Reporting by Siyi Liu and Mei Mei Chu; Editing by Rashmi Aich and Savio D'Souza)
