We study the AC losses in an infinitely long cylinder made of a superconducting core surrounded by a non-magnetic metallic sheath and subjected to an axial magnetic field. The losses are computed by assuming the Bean–Kim model for the superconductor and Ohmic dissipation for the metal. The time varying magnetic flux crossing the superconductor induces eddy currents in the metal sheath and, due to the nonlinear response of the superconducting material, generates harmonics in the metal current density. In turn, these currents generate distorted magnetic fields acting back on the superconductor. This coupling mechanism is sensitive to the magnetic constitutive law of the superconductor and affects both the waveform of the fields and the total losses. In this paper, we study the importance of the harmonics in the metal on the total losses, as well as their sensitivity to a field dependent critical current density following Kim’s law.