Comment by jpollock

4 hours ago

I wonder how much of that are foreign central banks moving their gold reserves out of the USA... France, The Netherlands and Germany have been moving gold.

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cvgyn8q8gqxo

France completely exited New York, the Netherlands roughly halved what they've stored there. That was in 2026. They didn't physically ship any of it, they sold it and rebought in Europe.

Germany moved 111t from New York in 2016, and, afaict, nothing since then. There's still 1236t left.

Italy also keeps over 1000t in New York (no plans for repatriation).

  • > They didn't physically ship any of it, they sold it and rebought in Europe.

    The Netherlands physically moved 27 tons of gold from the US and Canada (mostly New York) to the Netherlands this year.

The article is about the export of mined gold. The US produces ~160 tons of gold annually from domestic mining operations.

It’s specifically nonmonetary gold, so that’s a separate issue unless those nations were holding non-reserve gold here.

Although a sibling commenter mentioned that they moved their gold by selling it and rebuying it in Europe. If that gold qualifies as non-reserve gold after sale, and is moved out after sale to (for example) China, then perhaps?

Do they count as export if the owner doesn't change?

  • If central banks sell their gold in the US and buy new gold abroad (to save themselves physically transporting the gold across the ocean[0]), I suspect that the demand this creates for gold abroad will ultimately cause US gold exports to rise, too.

    [0]: See the link in https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50134172

    • Selling it in place neatly sidesteps suspicion about how secure the NY gold really is and if it's all really still there, too.

  • Do they count as export if the owner doesn't change?

    I don't know. Does it count as export if it's not moved an inch?

That's what I thought too but the article says it's mostly fresh mine output (and recycled).

From the article: > The U.S. government is still reporting that its gold reserves are unchanged, so these exports look to be coming from current mine output and recycling operations.

Not sure if "The U.S governments gold reserves" also includes the ones from other countries though.

I don't think that counts as exports although they could be selling in the US and buying locally where traders move the gold (then it will be counted as exports).

So not actually productive exports. Just draining the coffers as the criminals in charge loot the commons.