# Silver Structural State Determination v1.0

Fixed: 2026-08-27 (JST)  
Decision: **CONDITIONALLY VIABLE AS A U.S. STRUCTURAL COMPONENT／NOT ELIGIBLE AS THE SIX-INDEX SILVER STATE**

## Determination

USGS official statistics can support a slow annual study of U.S. physical Silver supply, use and inventories. They cannot replace a Silver market-price benchmark and do not by themselves represent the global Silver balance. The candidate is therefore isolated as a new-version **U.S. Silver Supply-Demand Structural State**.

The six-index Silver card remains `Descriptive Only / Unknown`. No current Structural State is calculated in this decision.

## Official evidence

USGS Data Series 140 publishes historical mineral statistics including production, imports, exports, stocks, reported and apparent consumption and end uses. USGS states that blank cells mean unavailable or withheld, not zero, and defines apparent consumption generally as production plus imports minus exports, adjusted for stock change. The listed Silver workbook has update year 2021.

The Silver commodity page also provides monthly Mineral Industry Surveys and annual Mineral Commodity Summaries. Public MIS posting is temporarily paused during the transition to ScienceBase; the latest posted Silver MIS is January 2026.

USGS-authored or produced data are in the U.S. Public Domain, with credit requested. Marked third-party material, all price/unit-value fields and the USGS identifier are outside this automatic clearance and are excluded from the candidate until separately reviewed.

## Preregistered components — execution disabled

| Component | Required official fields | Transform | State |
|---|---|---|---|
| Flow Pressure | Annual production and apparent consumption | Three-year annualized log growth gap: `gC − gP` | Tightening at ≥ +2pp; Easing at ≤ −2pp; otherwise Balanced |
| Inventory Buffer | Annual stocks and apparent consumption | `stocks / apparent consumption`, trailing 20-observation percentile | Thin ≤33; Ample ≥67; otherwise Normal |
| Import Dependence | Official net-import-reliance percentage, if continuous | Keep official value | Context flag only; never changes core class |

Structural Tightening requires Tightening Flow Pressure and a buffer that is not Ample. Structural Easing requires Easing Flow Pressure and a buffer that is not Thin. Every other complete combination is Mixed. Missing, withheld, nonpositive, discontinuous or quarantined required data produce Unknown.

## Hard boundaries

- Annual U.S. structural state only; no global-state or price-direction claim.
- No link or splice to LBMA, IMF, World Bank, BLS or legacy Silver v0.30.
- No reuse of v0.30 thresholds, labels, 214/216 results or its two preserved failures.
- No interpolation, carry-forward, proxy, mixed Vintage or retrospective relabeling.
- Exact workbook sheet, column, unit, notes and continuity bindings remain 0/2.
- No Raw download, calculation, result viewing, Backtest, OOS or Forward Validation from this decision.

## Release gate

Before even the separately named U.S. structural component can be considered, exact fields and rights exclusions must be bound, continuous coverage and method breaks audited, validation periods and PASS/FAIL fixed before results, exact Raw Cold Start passed, at least four annual Forward observations accrued, and a human must approve it.

Current result: Structural candidate viable = YES; core six-index Silver eligible = NO; Preview = Descriptive Only; Production Emit = BLOCKED.

## Official sources

- https://www.usgs.gov/centers/national-minerals-information-center/silver-statistics-and-information
- https://www.usgs.gov/centers/national-minerals-information-center/historical-statistics-mineral-commodities-united
- https://www.usgs.gov/information-policies-and-instructions/copyrights-and-credits