Ever since the end of the Second World War in 1945, a rehabilitated Germany has built close ties to the U.S. and committed to Western democratic values. The country has put its money—or rather, its gold—where its mouth is.
That financial commitment to the U.S. is now being put to the test, as calls from within Germany grow louder to pull the country’s vast stock of gold reserves out of the Federal Reserve.
Germany has the world’s second-highest stockpile of official gold reserves, at 3,352 tons. More than a third of that, around 1,200 tons, is stored in the Fed, equivalent to about $130 billion in value. Yet President Donald Trump’s adversarial rhetoric against the country and its allies has prompted calls to check on those reserves, and, if possible, bring them home.
German gold and the U.S.
Following the Second World War, Germany had effectively depleted its gold reserves to fund its various conflicts. The blank slate on which the country built up its fresh batch of reserves mirrored the country’s new diplomatic strategy.
Germany prioritized moving vast amounts of gold out of the country and far from the Soviet Union, fearing for its status during the Cold War. The country’s close ties with the U.S., which has historically held up the Western World order, made the Fed an obvious resting place for the commodity.
In a whirlwind opening salvo to his presidency, though, Trump has rocked the established geopolitical order, slapping import tariffs on traditional allies like the European Union and threatening to take control of the territory of Greenland by force.
Germany has also been prompted into a multibillion-dollar pledge to beef up its military, partly motivated by Trump’s rhetoric on NATO and the war in Ukraine. Several voices across Germany now believe the U.S. is no longer a safe haven for its multibillion-dollar gold reserves.
Speaking to German publication Bild last month, Christian Democratic Union politician Markus Ferber said: “I demand regular checks of Germany’s gold reserves. Official representatives of the Bundesbank must personally count the bars and document their results.”
In a follow up interview with Reuters, Ferber said: “Trump is erratic and one cannot rule out that someday he will come up with creative ideas how to treat foreign gold reserves.
“The Bundesbank’s policy for gold reserves has to reflect the new geopolitical realities.”
Ferber’s latest comments came as the German Taxpayers Federation sent a letter to the Bundesbank asking for Germany’s central bank, the Bundesbank, to repatriate the country’s gold.
“Trump wants to control the Fed, which would also mean controlling the German gold reserves in the U.S,” the federation’s vice-president, Michael Jaeger, told Reuters. “It’s our money, it should be brought back.”
To date, the Bundesbank has been careful not to ruffle feathers in the U.S. with regard to the status of its gold reserves, publicly backing the Fed as a protector of its assets.
Countries have been taking different approaches to how they think about the location of their gold since Trump. Indeed, many nations have decided to create closer ties between their assets and the country to avoid negative repercussions.
In late January, the FT reported that waiting times to get gold out of the Bank of England had increased eightfold as countries rushed to get their reserves across to the U.S. to safeguard the commodity from potential tariffs. Germany itself holds about 13% of its gold reserves at the Bank of England.
This story was originally featured on Fortune.com
