During recent months — between March and August 2026 — more than 27 metric tons of physical gold bars (worth approximately $3.84B) were shipped across the Atlantic again. This time in the opposite direction: from the United States and Canada to secure DNB vaults at a Dutch military base near the town of Zeist, the Netherlands.
The physical cross-Atlantic gold transport to Zeist was just part of a total gold transfer of 86 tons of gold, which also included the sale of around 59 metric tons of gold – worth approximately $8.3B — in New York and the purchase of an equivalent amount of gold in London via the Bank of England. The latter was done to mitigate the security risk and high cost of shipping the entire volume of bullion across the Atlantic.
The Netherlands removed far more gold from the U.S. than it did from Canada. Most of the gold transfer, $10.7B out of a total of $11.7B at December 2025 valuations, came from the U.S.
Interestingly, approximately the same amount of gold (about 27 tons) as was shipped from the U.S. and Canada to Zeist, the Netherlands, was transported from existing gold reserves at Zeist to London.
Apparently, the U.S./Canadian gold bars do not meet the so-called London Good Delivery (LGD) standard, and “could not be utilized as quickly and directly in a crisis situation.” The Zeist gold bars, on the other hand, already fit the London specifications and would not need to be melted down and recast.
Exactly how the precious metal was transported across the Atlantic is still a tightly held secret.
What does this gold flight out of North America, mostly out of the U.S., say about geopolitical and financial relations –- tensions and uncertainties –-between the U.S. and Europe?
Financial leaders are quite circumspect about it.
DNB President Olaf Sleijpen said: “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.”
Frederic Schneider, a nonresident senior fellow at the Middle East Council on Global Affairs, said that while the Netherlands and other countries have been repatriating gold for several years, that desire has “gained momentum” since Trump’s second inauguration as US president…[Trump’s] increasingly bellicose and erratic behaviour even towards his allies, and the US’ increasing weaponisation of the dollar, international trade relations, and international payment systems [have] made many countries very nervous..”
The Dutch publication NRC.NL is less subtle. Emphasizing the important role gold plays in the financial system, especially in time of unrest, it writes:
Since Donald Trump’s return to the White House, the American president has caused unrest. He started a trade war, said he wanted to annex Greenland, kidnapped the president of Venezuela, and started a war against Iran. He also significantly increased the pressure on the American system of central banks, the Federal Reserve. He threatened layoffs, appointed like-minded individuals to the board, and continues to complain about the Fed’s interest rate policy.
It also points out “major [international] concerns about the independence of the Fed, and indirectly, about the gold reserves that the central bank manages on behalf of dozens of countries in vaults in New York.”
Dr Emma Shortis, Australia Institute’s international and security affairs director, is more blunt.
“Trump has shown himself entirely willing to trash the established norms and rules of international politics,” she says. “Having those reserves in the United States is a potential vulnerability…You can absolutely imagine a scenario where, for whatever reason, the Trump administration decides to hold onto them.”
She adds, “We have every reason to think, based on evidence of what the Trump administration has already done, that [it is] entirely willing to use advantages they have, like gold reserves stored in the United States, as weapons against traditional allies.”
The Netherlands is not the first country to move its gold reserves out of the U.S.
Between 2013 and 2017, the German Bundesbank repatriated 300 metric tons of gold from New York to Frankfurt. It also moved 374 tons of gold from the Banque de France to German soil.
Between 2017 and 2018, Turkey withdrew all its gold held at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York and transferred it back to Turkey and to other European banks.
More recently — in January 2026 — France completed the sale of more 140 metric tons of gold out of the Federal Reserve Bank in New York, buying the gold back in Europe and depositing the gold at the Banque de France, all at a neat profit.
Italy, that keeps more than 40 percent of its gold in the U.S. — about 1,000 tons — “has also faced pressure to reconsider its US holdings.” A similar debate has been taking place in Germany.
The Financial Times summarizes the recent flight of gold out of the U.S. as follows:
The transfer follows calls from European politicians and taxpayer lobbyists to repatriate gold reserves from the US, warning that an unreliable American government under President Donald Trump may otherwise seize them amid growing transatlantic tensions.
