SHANGHAI, Dec. 25 (SMM) –The US fiscal cliff negotiations remained unresolved last week, and overseas investors opted to leave markets ahead of the Christmas holiday, pushing LME copper prices down. Domestic copper discounts widened gradually due to increasing supply of hedged copper, but cargo-holders of scrap copper insisted on firm prices in the face of tight scrap copper supply. The price spread between bare bright (including tax) and refined copper thus dropped marginally to RMB 800-1,100/mt, meaning that scrap copper still enjoyed some price advantage against refined copper. Nevertheless, copper semis producers still bought scrap copper on an as-needed basis, so scrap copper market transactions were not seen to improve noticeably.