Russian copper company (RCC) and Chinese firms are dodging taxes and circumventing the consequences of Western sanctions by trading a new copper billet disguised as scrap metal, according to Reuters. According to sources, the copper billet was shredded by an intermediary in the remote Xinjiang-Uyghur region to make it difficult to distinguish from scrap, allowing exporters and importers to benefit from the tariff differential between scrap and new metal. In December, the Russian export duty on copper billets was 7%, lower than the 10% duty on scrap. Importing copper billets into China is taxed…