THE SUPPLY LEDGER
Domestic output, net imports and the reported consumption boundary
Read the quantity bridge first, then the official reliance percentage. The two aligned panels use one selected year and never turn a supply dependency measure into a price signal.
Accepted public-domain release
MCS 2026 v1.3 · 2021–2025 · 2025 estimated · no live provider required.
Mine output is dark, secondary output is copper, and net imports are blue. The black cap is apparent consumption. Move the pointer, tap or drag, or focus the chart and use Left, Right, Home and End.
EXACT-YEAR BRIDGE
2025 estimate: keep every term visible
The residual is not silently allocated. It retains the effect of stock-change adjustments and independent rounding in the published components.
Open the complete five-year source and reconciliation table
| Year | Mine | Secondary | Imports | Exports | Net imports | Industry stocks | Apparent consumption | Adjustment / rounding residual | Official reliance | Status / source note |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1,020 | 908 | 6,160 | 137 | 6,023 | 56 | 7,950 | -1 | 76% | Published | |
| 1,010 | 1,090 | 4,490 | 276 | 4,214 | 55 | 6,310 | -4 | 67% | Published | |
| 1,020 | 1,150 | 4,950 | 73 | 4,877 | 27 | 7,070 | +23 | 69% | Published | |
| 1,050 | 955 | 4,430 | 113 | 4,317 | 23 | 6,320 | -2 | 68% | Published | |
| 1,100 | 1,000 | 7,600 | 300 | 7,300 | 25 | 9,400 | 0 | 77% | Estimated. |
Interpretation boundary: apparent consumption does not include investment purchases and sales. The trade rows exclude coinage and waste and scrap. High import reliance does not by itself establish scarcity, disruption probability, fair value, price direction or a trading signal; this chart is not a price forecast.
THE DIRECT ANSWER
The 2025 estimate reports the highest import reliance in the five-year release
USGS estimates 77% net import reliance in 2025, compared with a five-year low of 67% in 2022. Estimated apparent consumption rises to 9,400 metric tons while mine and secondary production together contribute 2,100 tonnes.
This does not prove a shortage. A reliance percentage does not disclose supplier concentration, contract terms, private inventories, substitution capacity, disruption probability or the volume available at a particular price.
ACCOUNTING BEFORE STORY
Apparent consumption does not include investment purchases and sales
Domestic output
Mine production and secondary refinery production are separate physical flows. Primary refinery output is not added because it can process material already represented elsewhere in the balance.
Trade
The source includes silver content in ores, concentrates, ash, residues, refined bullion and dore. It excludes coinage and waste and scrap material.
Adjustments
Government and industry stock changes enter the official formula. GoldObserve retains the residual produced by those adjustments and published rounding.
For that reason, this page is not a total-demand dashboard. It answers a narrower and reproducible question: how the official U.S. supply-accounting rows reconcile inside one MCS edition.
ONE VERSION, NOT A FALSE LONG HISTORY
The five-year window is deliberate
The long-run Data Series 140 workbook reports 10,400 tonnes of apparent consumption for 2021, while MCS 2026 reports 7,950 tonnes for that same year. Secondary production overlaps exactly, but the broader consumption account was revised. GoldObserve therefore keeps this entire bridge inside MCS 2026 rather than joining incompatible editions.
A future MCS refresh must compare every overlap, definition, note, estimate flag and hash before replacing this baseline. A longer chart would be visually impressive but methodologically weaker unless those historical revisions are versioned and reconciled.
SOURCE IDENTITY
One public-domain file, frozen by two hashes
The accepted file is MCS2026_Commodities_Data.csv, 3,189,010 bytes, MD5 36185ff3742087e1dd90c52fe634fe12 and SHA-256 582a0aa231aea53d8a97dc8d1cd3dfa5f885cf3760353e3d029d7f0ae4fbaaf5. It comes from USGS MCS 2026 version 1.3, updated 2026-05-27 and retrieved 2026-08-14.
CONTINUE THE SUPPLY RESEARCH
Use the page that matches the question
QUESTIONS
U.S. silver import-reliance FAQ
What is U.S. silver net import reliance?
USGS defines it as imports minus exports and adjustments for Government and industry stock changes, expressed as a percentage of apparent consumption. GoldObserve displays the official percentage rather than replacing it with a simplified ratio.
What does apparent silver consumption include?
The MCS 2026 definition combines mine production, secondary production and imports, subtracts exports and applies Government and industry stock-change adjustments. It does not include investment purchases and sales.
Why does the supply bridge include a residual?
The published components are independently rounded, while the official definition also includes stock-change adjustments. The residual keeps that difference visible instead of forcing the displayed terms to reconcile artificially.
Why does this page begin in 2021?
All measures are kept inside the same MCS 2026 version. The older Data Series 140 workbook has a different revised 2021 apparent-consumption value, so GoldObserve does not splice the two editions into a false same-definition history.
Does high silver import reliance predict a higher silver price?
No. Import reliance describes a national supply-accounting relationship. It does not measure disruption probability, inventories available to market participants, investment demand, fair value or future price direction.