The Netherlands' central bank transferred nearly 90 metric tons of gold bars from the United States and Canada to Britain amid growing concerns of "increasing geopolitical unrest," according to CNBC.
"With this relocation, we have improved the tradability of our gold reserves. We expect that we will never need to use them, but we do need to strengthen our resilience and preparedness," DNB Governor Olaf Sleijpen said of the development.
Roughly 25% of the gold reserves stored in New York and Ottawa were moved to London over the summer.
CNBC reports:
The transferred gold is now stored with the Bank of England because gold stored there must meet international trade standards and is recognized as "the world's most easily tradable gold," DNB said, adding that the move strengthens its "crisis preparedness."
By contrast, DNB said the gold bars held in the U.S. and Canada could not be utilized as quickly and directly in a crisis situation.
The bank holds 30.8% of its 612.4 tons of gold reserves at its cash center in Zeist, southeast of Amsterdam.
“Keeping a larger share of the gold reserves in London strengthens the function of gold as an anchor of trust,” the Dutch central bank said.
Preparations to move the gold were not disclosed until the process was completed because it was a matter of vital public interest, Finance Minister Eelco Heinen said in a statement.
The Dutch central bank is not the first major European institution to shift gold out of the U.S. in recent years.
In 2025, France's central bank pulled 129 metric tons of gold, then valued at $15 billion, from U.S. vaults and replaced it with newer, high-quality bullion held in Paris. At the time, Francois Villeroy de Galhau, then-governor of the Banque de France, claimed that the move was not politically motivated.
"The residual portion of the stock, amounting to 129 tonnes or 5% of the total, which was held in New York, did not meet this standard. Rather than embarking on a lengthy and risky logistical operation, the simplest solution was to sell this gold and then buy back gold of the highest standard in Europe," the French central banker said in a statement.
"The sale of these US gold bars generated an exceptional capital gain of EUR 11 billion in 2025. This capital gain was duly recorded in the Banque de France's accounts and therefore belongs, along with the Bank's very sound net equity (EUR 283 billion), to all French citizens. France's gold reserves stand at 2,437 tonnes and will remain unchanged."
Meanwhile, advocacy groups in other major EU countries have voiced similar ambitions. Michael Jager, who heads the European Taxpayers Association, has pushed for Germany to bring its gold home, saying "Trump is unpredictable" and that the metal was "no longer safe" in the U.S., according to the New York Post.
The sums involved are substantial.
The Bundesbank holds roughly 3,350 metric tons of gold, of which 1,236 tons, roughly 37%, sit in New York.
However, Bundesbank President Joachim Nagel has dismissed the notion that the New York holdings are at risk.
"I have no doubt that the gold is safely stored at the Federal Reserve in New York," he said in an interview with WELT earlier this year.
"Eventually, the US would hurt itself most if it were to call that legal status into question in any way and thereby put the confidence of financial markets at risk."
The recent acceleration in geographical shifts of the location of central banks' precious metal hordes has not been lost on Goldman Sachs who recently noted that "The location of central bank’s gold holdings appears increasingly top of mind for reserve managers."
In an excellent note from Lina Thomas (available here in full for pro subs), she begins by noting that "the location of central bank’s gold holdings appears increasingly top of mind for reserve managers."
The Bank of England remains the most popular custodian (preferred by 57% of reserve managers in the World Gold Council survey), with the New York Fed also important, because gold there sits in the main settlement networks and can be used for swaps, leasing, and immediate market access.
The trade-off is political risk - freezing or restricted access, as with Venezuela’s gold at the BoE in 2018.
Thomas also notes that full repatriation is not the default solution: domestic vaults are costly for smaller banks and swap one set of risks for another.
Instead, many banks are spreading holdings across jurisdictions (BoE, NY Fed, BIS, Banque de France, and increasingly China) to keep liquidity while reducing single-jurisdiction exposure.
However, amid all this location-shifting, it remains clear that central banks are anxiously holding on to (if not adding to) their gold hordes and Goldman Sachs’ NowCast puts June central-bank buying at 57 tonnes (about 100 tonnes a month on a 3-month seasonally adjusted basis, versus a pre-2022 average of 17 tonnes), with China the largest identifiable buyer.
A 32-tonne inflow of monetary gold into London looks more like a custody transfer than sales, given a 98-tonne rise in foreign official holdings at the BoE.
With all that said, Goldman maintains its $4,900/oz end-2026 forecast, assuming roughly 50 tonnes a month of official buying in 2026 and 40 tonnes in 2027, driven by EM reserve diversification after the 2022 freeze of Russia’s assets.
Gold has already rebounded about 10% from its mid-July low back above $4,400 today (near the 200DMA) as investor demand (ETFs, COMEX positioning, and options) recovered once markets scaled back Fed-hike expectations.
Professional subscribers can read Goldman's full "Precious Comment: Gold and Central Banks: Storage Dilemma; Buying Trend Picks Up" note here at our new Marketdesk.ai portal
Tyler Durden Thu, 09/03/2026 - 14:20On Tuesday we reported that China had derailed the G20's joint communiqué in Asheville, with a senior US official telling the FT the impasse "came down to a few words." It turns out one word did most of the damage.
According to Bloomberg - operating out of Hong Kong because they were banned from the event by Treasury - the decisive sticking point was the term "non-market" in a sentence on trade imbalances. Chinese officials read it as a coded attack on state-owned enterprises that sit at the foundation of the country's economic model - and refused to sign.
Whether intended as a jab or not, Washington's official definition of non-market policies and practices includes government interventions that shift global trade towards domestic industries, and it explicitly notes the conduct of state-owned or state-controlled firms. The phrase has anchored US complaints about China for years; the USTR framed its 2017 probe as a response to Beijing's non-market economic system. Dropping it into a G20 text is a way of naming China without naming China.
The US didn't budge after Beijing tried to soften it. The Chinese delegation - led by PBOC Governor Pan Gongsheng and Vice Finance Minister Liao Min, a veteran of last year's tariff-war negotiations - floated alternative wording that would address imbalances without spotlighting SOEs, and reportedly picked up quiet backing from several other delegations. Yet the final US chair statement kept the line urging countries to "eliminate non-market policies and practices that exacerbate imbalances."
In total, Treasury said China was pissed over four paragraphs - with "Non-market" appearing in two of them. The others spotlighted the functioning of key value chains, critical minerals and debt restructuring among them. That squares with what US and European officials told the FT: Beijing wouldn't accept any reference to critical minerals at all.
Balance Deez NutsChina's Finance Ministry sidestepped Bessent's remarks and called for a comprehensive, balanced view of global imbalances. Commerce Ministry spokesperson Huang Ling went further at Thursday's briefing, saying that hyping imbalance and overcapacity claims at venues like the G20 is really about justifying protectionism and containing China. Pan, in a Wednesday statement, blamed rising protectionism, overstretched national-security framing and policy unpredictability for worsening imbalances - and offered a symmetrical remedy: deficit countries should narrow fiscal gaps and raise savings, while surplus countries boost consumption and investment.
In short: the $1.2 trillion surplus is your problem, not ours. For reference, China's 2025 surplus was up 20% year-over-year, and the US deficit with China alone ran to roughly $200 billion, per BEA data.
Bessent kept swinging at a Charlotte Economics Club event on Wednesday, claiming that around 4% of Chinese GDP goes into industrial subsidies - pointing to BYD as a prime beneficiary: "It is the best $70,000 car that $35,000 can buy."
Earlier this year, a Rhodium Group report put Chinese governments grants to BYD at roughly $292 per vehicle - about 5% of the company's $4,700 cost advantage over Tesla in China - with most of the gap attributed to in-house component production and sheer scale. Beijing's Commerce Ministry, in a July white paper disputing the overcapacity narrative, noted that the US and EU subsidize EVs and AI themselves and dismissed the non-market charge as a double standard.
What's NextTrump and Xi sit down in Washington on Sept. 24. Bessent runs the trade file and is set to lead bilateral AI talks in the coming weeks. Lawmakers are pressing Treasury to go after major Chinese banks over Iran. And the two sides just spent days in North Carolina unable to agree on a single adjective.
As one US official put it after Asheville: if they can't agree on words, they won't deliver on action. The more Washington organizes its China policy around the word "non-market," the more Beijing reaches for another ace: critical minerals. Our decoupling theme stands.
Tyler Durden Thu, 09/03/2026 - 14:00The daily benchmark measuring the cost of shipping raw materials across major global maritime routes is breaking out to a nearly three-year high this week, as Bloomberg reports that typhoons are squeezing the supply of Capesize vessels just as mining companies increase iron ore shipments across the Pacific and Atlantic.
The Baltic Dry Index, which tracks freight rates for several vessel classes, including Capesize, Panamax and Supramax vessels, jumped 5.5% to 3,331 points in London on Wednesday, its highest level since December 2023. The index is nearing a technical breakout as analysts at brokerage Thurlestone Shipping warn that a "perfect storm" is developing.
"We see the current surge as something of a perfect storm, with vessel supply tightening and demand firing in both basins at the same time," Thurlestone Shipping analysts said.
Maritime operations in the Pacific have been disrupted by a series of typhoons this summer, delaying vessels and reducing the amount of effective tonnage available to exporters. At the same time, Australian miners are ramping up shipments as maintenance programs wind down, while upgraded transshipment operations are boosting ore flows from Guinea's giant Simandou deposit.
The BDI's ascent comes as dry-bulk carrier stocks have soared, outperforming even tanker operators as investors price in stronger freight earnings and widening maritime bottlenecks.
The best tactical trade on rising BDI is the BDRY ETF.
"The market enters the latter part of the third quarter with a relatively high freight-rate floor just as Pacific typhoon activity typically becomes more disruptive to port operations," said Wilson Wirawan, head of dry-bulk shipping research at BRS Shipbrokers. He added, "Resulting delays and vessel inefficiencies, if any, could further tighten effective tonnage availability, adding another layer of support to an already firm Capesize market."
The world's major maritime shipping routes are tightening again. Weather disruptions, longer voyages and surging demand are boosting freight costs, delivering a windfall to shipowners while pushing up transportation costs for iron ore, coal and grain.
Tyler Durden Thu, 09/03/2026 - 13:40