React on Rails HN RSC Demo

jpollock 3d 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

morsch 3d ago

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).

JumpCrisscross 3d ago

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

This is effectively outsourcing that process to the banks.

minraws 3d ago

Banks can keep it in US and stay happy, they don't necessarily immediately need physical gold. So it's quite efficient, lots of govts do similar stuff.

JumpCrisscross 3d ago

> Banks can keep it in US and stay happy

If the Banque de France holds physical in New York and sells it to JPMorgan (nothing moves) and then in Paris buys contract for physical from UBS, there will probably need to be physical gold that moves.

In all likelihood, Swiss gold held by e.g. a Gulf customer might be sold to Paris (nothing moves) and JPMorgan may entice Venezuela to take those contracts on its balance sheet (nothing moves). But if it’s a big trade, the price of delivering physical in Paris (or Genève) will go above spot in New York at which point it’s profitable for JPMorgan to take delivery, load up planes and physically ship gold.

roenxi 3d ago

To supplement this, there was an interesting situation in 2025 [0] where a financial signal developed and we saw physical gold flows from London to New York. A very similar mechanism; governments do something, price signal develops, gold starts flying around.

[0] https://www.usagold.com/gold-arbitrage-trade-winds-down-amid...

Gravityloss 3d ago

I imagine a convoy of small but heavily armored ships leaving New York, with nervous sailors clutching machine guns on the decks.

nly 2d ago

That's why Gold futures have relaunched in London. Keeps spot trading and futures trading in the same timezone

cobbzilla 3d ago

agree with one minor quibble:

> load up planes and physically ship gold.

they would not load planes, they’d load ships, because it’s much cheaper.

tarsierscripter 3d ago

The Yapese people have been doing the same thing [1] for centuries.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rai_stones

Loughla 3d ago

It does amuse me greatly that major world powers are trading large piles of stones in a place without moving them just like that. That's deeply satisfying.

achalxyz 3d ago

Banks or the larger economy?

Buying in Europe creates a demand in Europe, and selling in US creates extra supply in US. So, the market takes care of the transfer from high supply to low supply area.

KPGv2 3d ago

> This is effectively outsourcing that process to the banks.

Did the banks export gold then?

The article says the issue is foreign entities buying American gold as a hedge against a volatile, risky dollar as a reserve currency.

Flashtoo 3d ago

> 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.

dmoy 3d ago

Yea it was some transport, some just market sales and re-purchases.

nly 2d ago

Gold futures are now trading in London again as well, which is related

Intercontinental Exchange launches trading in gold futures in London - https://giftarticle.ft.com/giftarticle/actions/redeem/e5d7ca...

MiroslavPokorny 3d ago

Where did FR, NL, DE rebuy the equivalent or close enough gold that was sold from NYC ?

How many other bank or multiples around the world would be able to support such a sale ?

simonebrunozzi 2d ago

It's a long story, but Italy's gold is not really Italy's, in the normal sense. Italy lost WWII, and has been a de facto "vassal" of the US since then; the US has several military bases in Italy, and has a very strong influence on anything related to foreign policy, etc. Don't take my word for it, there's not a single link to prove this, but a bit of research should make what I say at least plausible.

Just to give a small hint: the 1998 "strage del Cermis" [0], in which a US aircraft mistakenly cut a cable supporting a cable car and resulted in the killing of 20 people. The pilot, Captain Richard J. Ashby, and his navigator, Captain Joseph Schweitzer, were put on trial in the United States and were found not guilty.

Try to imagine something different. An Italian military aircraft flies in the US, and mistakenly kills 20 people. What would have happened to the Italian pilot?

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1998_Cavalese_cable_car_crash

IAmBroom 1d ago

I remember that incident vividly. They did not "just" mistakenly cut a cable; they were hotdogging below allowed elevations in forbidden, populated areas.

The official story is that the maps they were given were out-dated and led to confusion in their location.

It was painfully obvious that the incident was inspired more by Top Gun than those notoriously bad maps the USAF uses....

But as you say, the USA investigated itself and assured its little buddy Italy that there was nothing improper. So sorry about those dead folks.

jandrewrogers 3d ago

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

ricardonunez 3d ago

That’s an insane amount of gold production. I watch gold rush and last season the two largest producer were just about 11k ounces, moving and washing a massive amount of dirt and rocks.

justinator 3d ago

All their properties are played out. They're scraping the bitter dregs from properties that used to produce a massive amount more gold using extremely primitive tech to do so. In some cases, they're just re-running old mining tailings and scraping the ground at the edges of areas they knew were good.

If the price of gold didn't go up several thousand percent since the Klondike Gold Rush, there would be 0 reason to be up there at all. The Klondike produced -- on the low end of estimates -- 10 million ounces of gold worth in 10's of billions of dollars in today's money.

squidmaster 3d ago

10 million (troy?) ounces is 311 metric tons. That's plenty of gold, but doesn't seem terribly impressive compared to 160 tons annually? Also, to get that 10 million onces figure, I think you must be including the mid-20th century dredging and hydraulic mining era? That stuff was a far cry from humble prospectors with pans like people might imagine.

justinator 2d ago

No, I am comparing the amount of gold currently pulled from the Klondike. 11,000 ounces of gold from a (looks to me) single large operation pales in comparison to anything of yesteryear. 100 tons/year is quite the haul. Yukon currently is doing more like 3.5 tons/year in total. Nevada is just on a totally different scale.

Also Yukon (and that show) is majority placer, while Nevada looks to be hard rock? Hitting a rich vein means a massive payday, but even if not, the amount of rock they're moving is absolutely bonkers. Look at some of the massive craters they're digging out! 10, 20, 30 feet of topsoil to get to a few feet of pay gravel over a few dozen acres of ground is just not the same thing.

Dunno even what reclaimation looks like for a 1/2 mile deep crater. I'm guessing, "nothing lol deal with it"

Avshalom 3d ago

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gold_mining_in_Nevada

You gotta remember, if those miners weren't basically jumped up amateurs they wouldn't be on a tv show.

nozzlegear 3d ago

> I watch gold rush and last season the two largest producer were just about 11k ounces

I remember watching the first couple seasons of that show. Every time it went to commercial break they'd try to hype up the melodrama with "we gotta do X or we're not gonna reach a thousand ounces!"

My wife and I still quote that to each other out of the blue.

chneu 3d ago

Those guys are idiots on purpose to keep people watching.

ethbr1 3d ago

It's a lot less interesting to watch someone optimize a spreadsheet and every once in awhile look out at a smoothly running operation.

defrost 3d ago

"Insane amount of production" is relative, the entire USofA output is about half the production of the single state I live in.

Admittedly I live in a state roughly 3x the area of Texas.

MiroslavPokorny 3d ago

Hello WA.

defrost 3d ago

Born & bred - pretty nice place, although it's getting a bit crowded these days :/

iamnothere 3d ago

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?

progval 3d ago

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

codethief 3d ago

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

actionfromafar 3d ago

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

eternauta3k 3d ago

If this suspicion existed then you'd see a spread between (gold price in the US) and (gold price outside the US)

koliber 3d ago

When Trump screwed with the tariffs we saw exactly that. Arbitrarily messing with tariffs is one of the risks that causes people to think keeping gold in the US is not entirely safe.

actionfromafar 3d ago

Not necessarily. If relations are good, people are willing to look the other way a lot.

Crunchified 3d ago

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?

rkagerer 3d ago

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

mqus 3d ago

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.

raincole 3d ago

The answer is no. When talking about gold reserve that means U.S. Treasury-Owned Gold. Of which the volume hasn't changed much for decades.

raincole 3d ago

Gold repatriation doesn't count as export. So the answer to "how much" is zero.

csomar 3d ago

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).

dyauspitr 3d ago

Probably all of it.

samudrijan 3d ago

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

JumpCrisscross 3d ago

> majority of gold exports are going to Switzerland, almost certainly to the refiners there

Sounds like a refining bottleneck.

Globally, “refining capacity is operating at near-total utilization” [1]. That is particularly true in America, where refiners are “limiting purchases” [2] and “turning away new clients” [3].

Global demand for gold—lead by China—is surging. That, in turn, made gold “the most-developed commodity over 2020-25” with “the highest [new] mine count each year during the period” [4].

Where are those mines opening? In “Australia, Canada and the US,” which “accounted for the largest share of new gold production.”

[1] https://www.skillings.net/gold-refining-report-global-standa...

[2] https://www.jckonline.com/editorial-article/metal-refiners-t...

[3] https://www.jckonline.com/editorial-article/refining-pipelin...

[4] https://www.spglobal.com/market-intelligence/en/news-insight...

jfengel 3d ago

Huh. I'd have thought that capacity would rise with ore supply. It is "free money". Why leave it in the ground?

Sounds as if there is a point at which digging and refining is more expensive than buyers are willing to pay, so when demand goes up it takes time to expand supply.

WJW 3d ago

Refining takes big machines and a lot of energy. It's pretty much the opposite of free money, you need to invest a lot to unlock the revenue stream.

x______________ 3d ago

> Huh. I'd have thought that capacity would rise with ore supply. It is "free money". Why leave it in the ground?

> Sounds as if there is a point at which digging and refining is more expensive than buyers are willing to pay, so when demand goes up it takes time to expand supply.

It is common for gold mines to shut down when the price of gold is low, or when technologies used cannot extract a profitable amount. Mines can quickly resume operations when either conditions are met.

lesuorac 3d ago

If its free money why not leave it in the ground?

Why should gold be worth that much more in a bank vault than an underground mine? You’re not going to touch either of them!

Just get a note saying you own the gold in whatever cubic foot below ground marked by some coordinate system.

JumpCrisscross 3d ago

> Why should gold be worth that much more in a bank vault than an underground mine?

OG PoW.

Less facetiously: refined gold is a commodity. Gold ores are various and require expertise to differentiate and value. They're also bulky relative to their gold content.

econ 3d ago

For paper gold you don't even need gold.

elictronic 3d ago

China likes blocking various minerals such as rare earths to force countries to accept whatever outcome they desire.

I’m guessing those new mines opening are to limit the impact of this sort of situation in the future.

throwaway2037 3d ago

China is only 11.5% of world gold production (from mines).

rmm 3d ago

As someone who is in the gold mining industry, it is really been a… well gold mine for the past decade. Every year I think surely it needs to stop every year profits increase. It’s wild and it has set me and my family up, so I’m incredibly thankful.

comboy 3d ago

Wonder how much actual gold value increase is there vs real inflation. Official inflation values are useless, even basket of products does not give any decent idea about it.

dennis_jeeves2 2d ago

>Wonder how much actual gold value increase is there vs real inflation.

Most likely the latter.

XCSme 3d ago

I thought it was tokens

jjk166 3d ago

Anthropic's quarterly revenue is $16 billion. Assuming they are 40% of the ai market, pretend that all the ai market is american, and pretend all tokens are exclusively sold abroad, that would make AI tokens 7.3% of US exports, comparable to aircraft (7.5%). Of course in reality only a small portion of these tokens are american exports.

MobiusHorizons 3d ago

That really puts it in perspective in a nice way, thank you. These multiples really give a distorted sense of scale even when you know current production is not what is being valued

JumpCrisscross 3d ago

I think those count as services. Gold is the most-exported good.

XCSme 3d ago

Title doesn't mention good specifically.

How are service exports counted? All together? Or not considered exports?

JumpCrisscross 3d ago

> Title doesn't mention good specifically

Literally the link in the first paragraph: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/IEAXGG.

It’s conventional, in American English, for exports unadorned to mean just goods. It’s anachronistic. But it isn’t wrong.

Aachen 3d ago

Would have thought advertising and transaction fees myself, but the article says it's usually oil (ok I should have thought of that), "pharmaceuticals" (mkay, seems cheaper to make elsewhere so that's a bit strange), or aircraft and their parts (wut? How many aircraft can the world need that it commonly tops the export chart of the wealthiest country?!)

graemep 3d ago

Because in-patent pharmaceuticals are a LOT more expensive than out of patent ones their monetary value is far greater than the greater volume of out of patent pharmaceuticals. If you look at where big pharma makes its revenues and their sales relative to generics sellers you can see this. Because of that the cost of making them is not really that important.

As for aircraft, not that many in number, but very expensive things with very expensive parts.

michaelt 3d ago

> How many aircraft can the world need that it commonly tops the export chart of the wealthiest country?!

Consider how many American companies exclusively manufacture in the far east.

If a European buys a product "made by" Apple or nvidia or Nike or Levis - that's not an American export, it's an export of Indonesia, China, Vietnam, Taiwan, or wherever. America still gets the profits, though.

jjk166 3d ago

A single airliner can be half a billion dollars. That's about 1/4000th of the US's total goods exported in a single item.

MiroslavPokorny 3d ago

Boeing only assembles planes, they dont manufacture the components.

A lot of components are actually imports from other countries, eg Japan manufactures wings.

jjk166 2d ago

So? If you import $100 billion dollars of components and you do nothing to them before reselling abroad, you have $100 billion of exports.

MiroslavPokorny 2d ago

WRONG - You have nothing, the import and exports cancel each other.

cpgxiii 3d ago

> How many aircraft can the world need that it commonly tops the export chart of the wealthiest country?

Airliners and military aircraft are expensive. Consider that nearly the entire aircraft production capacity of Boeing and Lockheed-Martin as well as the engine production capacity of GE and P&W are booked for years to come. Also, unlike Airbus which has multiple final assembly plants across the world, Boeing only does final assembly in the US.

throwaway2037 3d ago

No, Boeing does final assembly in Zhoushan, China for 737s. Airbus does final assembly in EU (Hamburg, Toulouse), US (Alabama), Canada, and China (Tianjin).

cpgxiii 2d ago

The Zhoushan "Completion Center" is not an assembly line - it only handles interior fitment and exterior paint on aircraft that are otherwise fully assembled and have been flown from the production lines in Renton or Everett. The Airbus assembly lines outside the EU perform actual assembly of fuselage and wing components into complete aircraft.

JumpCrisscross 3d ago

Goods versus services. We tend to use the word “exports” to refer to only the former in America, which is anachronistic.

XCSme 3d ago

I mean, wouldn't that make sense given the market caps?

So many trillion-dollar valued AI-focused companies.

WJW 3d ago

It would make sense if the AI companies were rationally valued, yes. But they're not, so it's not.

asphodele 3d ago

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homestake_Mine_(South_Dakota)

"The Homestake Mine was a deep underground gold mine (8,000 feet or 2,438 m) located in Lead, South Dakota. Until it closed in 2002, it was the largest and deepest gold mine in the Western Hemisphere. The mine produced more than forty million troy ounces (43,900,000 oz; 1,240,000 kg) of gold during its lifetime. This is about 2,500 cubic feet (71 m3) or a volume of gold roughly equal to 18,677 US gallons.

...

In 1876, settlers Fred and Moses Manuel, Alex Engh, and Hank Harney discovered the Homestake deposit during the Black Hills Gold Rush. The Black Hills had been guaranteed to the Lakota Nation by the Fort Laramie Treaty, but the land was stolen for its gold."

When the illegal miners moved in on the Black Hills, Crazy Horse would on occasion raid them to sieze their gold, after which he would re-bury it.

octoberfranklin 3d ago

> Crazy Horse would on occasion raid them to sieze their gold, after which he would re-bury it.

Holy fucking badass move.

legitster 3d ago

The article points out the primary source is recycling operations.

This is not some big currency or export program. It's most likely Grandma and Grandpa hawking their jewelry.

The cash for gold industry in the US is absolutely massive and growing. Most of it is fueled by boomers dumping their assets into gold and silver - and then cashing it out when times get worse.

yndoendo 3d ago

There is a reason Pimps, Dealers bought gold chains versus kept cash. Cash and bank accounts could seized while what your arrested with, such as jewelry, is given back to you upon release.

Need cash on hand, pawn it or use it as collateral for a loan.

It is away around the legal system to retain wealth.

codingdave 3d ago

> It is away around the legal system to retain wealth.

Yes, absolutely, and it goes back farther than criminals. Why do you think everyone's grandma has a jewelry collection, while less of the youth do? Because before the 70s, women were not allowed to have their own bank accounts. Their gold and jewelry was the only type of wealth they could keep for themselves.

nunez 2d ago

This is fascinating. Do you have any good reads on this topic?

IAmBroom 1d ago

You've just described a large part of why Jews are so prominent in gem and jewelry trade. If a family's real estate and capital wealth are seized by Christian rulers, jewels and precious metals are the best value-by-weight to sneak a portion of it out during a pogrom.

The other reason is the Christian historically yes-and-no relationship with usury (banking).

skinfaxi 3d ago

Why couldn't jewelry or other items you are arrested with be seized as well if they can prove (or rather, if you can't disprove) they were bought with ill-gotten gains?

znnajdla 3d ago

When the USA used to be a law-abiding country, they generally respected people’s personal belongings. It’s hard to prove whether that piece of gold jewelry is not a family heirloom.

setopt 3d ago

That’s not just a US boomer thing, you’ll see the same in many Arabic countries for example, across generations.

memcg 3d ago

I have 30 lbs of gold plated PCB fingers that I have saved over the years. It might be time to figure out how to recycle and sell.

milleramp 3d ago

Here is one way to do it: https://youtu.be/r3-tmMg9dTs?is=i7M081-ypJ-pn16t

James_K 3d ago

This is disastrous. The president may need to take emergency measures to suspend the convertibility of the dollar into gold.

zaps 3d ago

Fort Knox is for tourists

erkt 3d ago

With the proper facilities, isn’t it already economical to transmute mercury to gold via neutron bombardment?

chasil 3d ago

If I am reading this correctly, then mercury-198 will receive a neutron, decay to mercury-197, then emit an electron to become gold-197.

Mercury has seven stable isotopes ranging from 195 to 204, so purifying to 198 is challenging (this isotope is 10% of the metal's occurrence). Would this require centrifuges as uranium does?

The decay chains of the other isotopes would be different.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synthesis_of_precious_metals#G...

"...the production cost is estimated to be a trillion times the market price of gold."

The above reaction is at the end of the section.

jjk166 3d ago

You wouldn't enrich the 198 isotope, you'd just bombard natural mercury and chemically separate out the gold afterwards.

> "...the production cost is estimated to be a trillion times the market price of gold."

Wikipedia just pulled this one out of its butt. The value of a neutron in a nuclear reactor is the opportunity cost of it not hitting a uranium atom to produce fission. 1 mole of neutrons can produce about $100,000 worth of wholesale electricity assuming 40% efficiency. 1 mole of neutrons could alternatively produce 1 mole of gold, which is worth about $26,500. So it's roughly 4 times the market price of gold.

Of course there would be the cost of building and running the reactor and the associated chemical processes to collect the gold, but these cost are probably similar orders of magnitude to mines and refineries. Certainly not 12 orders of magnitude more.

While it's not economical to make gold this way, it is economical to make certain medical isotopes this way.

Jap2-0 3d ago

>> "...the production cost is estimated to be a trillion times the market price of gold."

> Wikipedia just pulled this one out of its butt.

It is worth checking before accusing someone of making something up...

This appears to come from https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/fact-or-fiction-l..., which states that the author of a 1980 experiment says "It would cost more than one quadrillion dollars per ounce to produce gold by this experiment." That appears (from skimming sources) to come from a running cost of $5000/hr to produce a few hundred atoms of gold per hour. Modern methods are probably more efficient, but the number didn't come from nowhere.

Addendum: And per https://home.cern/alice-detects-conversion-lead-gold-lhc, the LHC can turn lead into gold at a rate of 89000 nuclei per second, which is ridiculously far from economically reasonable. The LHC cost $9 billion and uses a lot of power, so I'd say not "similar orders of magnitude to mines and refineries" used for gold.

jjk166 2d ago

> "It would cost more than one quadrillion dollars per ounce to produce gold by this experiment."

"This experiment" being a radically different method than the one under discussion. Wikipedia pulled something useless from someplace irrelevant, which is exactly what should be described as "pulled out of their butt."

The LHC is also neither a nuclear reactor, nor a gold making machine. You can make gold with it the way you can use a space shuttle to deliver newspapers. That it is possible is an interesting tidbit of trivia which you might include in an encyclopedia article, it is not however evidence supporting the claim that newspaper deliveries cost millions of dollars.

WJW 3d ago

No it really isn't. People have transmuted a few hundred milligrams of mercury into gold in the lab with multi-million dollar machines, but that doesn't make it economically viable in the slightest.

PowerElectronix 3d ago

Speaks volumes of the results the policies to make the US a manufacturing and exporting country are getting.

tim333 3d ago

Maybe tariffing everyone isn't really the path to prosperity?

aljgz 3d ago

For people who don't understand second and higher consequences, it sounds like a good one

cowlevel 3d ago

Exporting gold isn't an improvement in exports by the way. Exporting gold means people are betting your currency is overvalued. Exporting a huge amount of gold means people are betting your currency is incredibly overvalued. Gold being your #1 export means you're screwed, when alongside many other signs that also mean you're screwed.

trimethylpurine 3d ago

If sanctions become effective, the next best option for terrorists is gold. Logically the next step for them.

Tracking gold shipment is the next logical step for law enforcement.

So it's probably a short lived bubble, for anyone weighing investments.

cowlevel 3d ago

who are you referring to by the word "terrorists"?

trimethylpurine 2d ago

Try searching "sanctions" on dictionary.com. Hopefully that helps with your question.

syngrog66 3d ago

Any reasonable wealthy actor who had been up/long on the US prior to 2025 would by now, late 2026, be down/short on them. The reasons are glaring, and accelerating.

cowlevel 3d ago

Unfortunately the market can remain irrational longer than you can remain solvent. Rational actors often lose huge amounts of money because the market is irrational, so it's even more rational to just never short anything.

manlymuppet 3d ago

How much of this is exports being ranked by value, and gold, even a little being worth a lot, quickly becomes the “top” export despite being relatively small in absolute quantity terms?

ashdksnndck 3d ago

Was anyone confused by the title and thought we are exporting more gold in volume or weight than other products? It seems obvious that gold must be winning on value.

phyzome 3d ago

Sort of, yeah. My reaction was "I know we export huge amounts of food, gold can't be a bigger business than that". But the answer is simply that gold is so vastly overpriced that it exceeds other goods as a result.

herbst 3d ago

So it's in fact a bigger business. Why do Americans always make up weird comparison methods when it looks bad for them?

bigmadshoe 3d ago

Exports are typically ranked in dollars, not in kilograms. Do we think about the weight of GPUs a country exports or their value?

cortesoft 3d ago

What else would it be ranked on other than value? How else would you compare different types of items?

ceroxylon 3d ago

From the article:

>That’s not just because the price of gold reached record high prices. In February 2026, the tons of gold exported may have set an all-time record.

manlymuppet 3d ago

    > Normally, America’s highest value exports are either oil, pharmaceuticals, or aircraft and their parts.  Not now.  Starting in October 2025, the value of gold exports has topped all other categories almost every month.

From what I’m reading, the article does rank exports by value.

Relative to quantity, the price of gold might have less to do with why it’s the top of the list, but gold being more valuable in general might still be the main reason it’s at the top.

For example:

June

Oil at $1 a barrel

Gold at $10 a ton

100 barrels of oil exported - $100

9 tons of gold exported - $90

By value, oil is the top export.

——-

July

Oil at $1 a barrel

Gold at $9 a ton

100 barrels of oil exported - $100

12 tons of gold exported - $108

By value, gold is now the top export.

——-

Even though the price of gold dropped—-the inverse of our current situation to illustrate an extreme—-the general higher price of gold is more relevant to the ranking than its quantity increase.

maxldn 3d ago

I feel like pharmaceuticals and aircraft are quite expensive by mass

Dylan16807 3d ago

That's not an answer to the question. Yes the gold is setting a tonnage record for gold but value is the only reason it's high up on the list.

shevy-java 3d ago

The USA no longer "exports" information to Ukraine. This means the USA under agent Krasnov now supports dictator Putin. Gold being exported is another piece of the puzzle.

I think agent Krasnov needs to have all his assets seized and given to The People. That includes the whole corrupt family dynasty. It is fascinating to see how easily the US democracy can be disabled; Yuri explained this in the 1980s already:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yErKTVdETpw

im3w1l 3d ago

Judging by stock prices, I think the implicit expectation is that the US will soon start exporting a lot of AI.

Havoc 3d ago

The more likely explanation is everyone reckons the AI bubble is about to pop and is suddenly very interested in assets known to hold their value in times of turmoil

_ache_ 3d ago

If you think that USD value will drop sharply, it's a logical thing to do.

f001 3d ago

It’s more of losing trust in the US. If they don’t believe they’ll have access to it when needed or if they believe it might be seized for whatever made up reason, makes sense to move it somewhere they’ll have control over it.

JumpCrisscross 3d ago

Probably not. This is non-monetary gold mostly going off to refiners. Not bullion.

bigmadshoe 3d ago

Why would the dropping value of the USD be a factor in selling gold? Doesn't holding gold hedge against exactly that?

I think the real reason is that they're afraid of political instability in the US that may result in 1) an inability to retrieve their gold, or 2) the government confiscating it.

cowlevel 3d ago

It's other countries selling their USD to buy gold, not the US itself.

declan_roberts 3d ago

I don't quite follow. Countries hold gold to protect their own currency from devaluation, not bc they expected it to become stronger against a dollar.

_ache_ 3d ago

If you have USD and you think it will value less soon, you change it to gold instead. If you own gold in the US and think that the USD value will drop very low, you move out of the USD fearing gold retention.

ericmay 3d ago

But there isn’t a good reason to think that since countries such as Italy, UK, France, and others are in much worse financial positions.

A lot of this stuff is just business as usual, and then tabloids like to turn it into some doom and gloom nonsense.

T-A 3d ago

From [1], in 2025 government net debt / GDP for the countries mentioned was:

Germany 47.2 USA 96.7 France 108.8 Italy 127.7

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_governmen...

ericmay 3d ago

I didn’t mention Germany, not that it’s bad to include it. But unlike the others the US has a growing economy.

herbst 3d ago

What makes you think they are are worse financial positions? Propaganda around here makes it sound the US is very close to collapsing

ericmay 3d ago

> What makes you think they are are worse financial positions?

Broadly speaking: low growth, high debt, aging populations, aging infrastructure, and very intense economic pressure from countries like the US and China, but also increasing competition with the rising of other countries for global resources.

jack_pp 3d ago

How does holding gold protect from devaluation? No one has currency backed by gold any more.

skybrian 3d ago

I don't think holding gold does much, but in theory, a central bank could prop up its currency by selling the gold. It's like selling any other asset.

scotty79 3d ago

> How does holding gold protect from devaluation?

I think the idea is to rise the value of your currency, you rise the demand for your currency, by selling for it something that everybody wants, like gold.

Of course this demand is artificial and you'll run out of hold to sell at some point, but it can hopefully carry you over thd bump.

irishcoffee 3d ago

I still don’t get it. Why does everyone want gold? Its uses are some types of electronics and jewelry. Almost seems like crypto, it has value because it is somewhat rare… and everyone else also thinks it has value.

Sincere question.

iamnothere 3d ago

It’s similar to the valuation of crypto, being based on scarcity and mutual agreement, but without the risk of losing your funds from hacks or bugs, and without the benefit of online transfer. You can put it in a hole in the ground and it will be the exact same in 50 years. It’s shiny and has a history.

Nations like to use it for reserves because it’s stable, historically fit for the purpose of exchange, and well-understood. You can “count” it and use this to settle balances in a way that outsiders can’t easily interfere with.

Almost all “value” is strange and complex. Why is Francium, which is less useful than even gold, worth a theoretical $28 billion per ounce? (Not that you would find any buyers for that quantity.) Why is a Black Lotus card worth $3 million? Why is a dollar worth whatever you can buy for a dollar?

Supermancho 3d ago

Gold ingot relative rarity + desirability + physical durability means it's a 'physical good' that is likely to retain value above a relative floor...ie it will always be worth something to someone, and virtually every country tracks their own estimate. Gold is a standard element of trade historically as it's a little difficult to steal (easier to defend physically) while being fairly simple to verify and measure.

AnimalMuppet 3d ago

Gold has been valued across almost all cultures for thousands of years. That creates an expectation that it will still be valued.

And, gold is limited (in recoverable quantities) in Earth's crust. Nobody can print a bunch more of it, unlike fiat currency.

Between those two, it's what many people reach for when they fear that the government is going to devalue their currency. They can buy now, with currency that will soon be worth less, and what they buy will be worth something even after the currency becomes worth less.

_ache_ 3d ago

The value of Gold isn't linked to any currency. Money is just paper (or a number) and can be de-valuated. Gold doesn't.

scotty79 3d ago

> Why does everyone want gold?

Because you sell it cheap.

> Almost seems like crypto, it has value because it is somewhat rare… and everyone else also thinks it has value.

Exactly.

It has value because it won't spoil and you can sell it later gor the same or more because it's scarce.

theendisney 3d ago

To trade with Anunnaki. They need it to repair Nibiru's failing atmosphere.

scotty79 3d ago

If you sell something in US, you get paid in US dollars. If you believe dollars soon won't be worth the paper they are printed on, you immediately spend dollars on something that has durable value and take it with you instead.

throwawayffffas 3d ago

It's more like if you think Trump is likely to say, actually that's my gold.

IAmGraydon 3d ago

They think the Trump administration will confiscate it.

Dumblydorr 3d ago

Whatever would give them that idea…

antibios 3d ago

It wasn't that long ago

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Executive_Order_6102?wprov=sfl...

widowlark 3d ago

its just unwinding from the tariff holdings

Nemo_bis 3d ago

200 comments and this is the only correct one :)

beloch 3d ago

"There are multiple foreign governments growing leery of the future loss of purchasing power of the U.S. dollar, where they would prefer a different reserve asset with a better track record. Among all foreign central banks combined, the value of their gold reserves now exceeds their holdings of U.S. Treasury debt."

...

"When you put these factors together, my suspicion is that a high percentage of U.S. gold exports are going to China, though some must first detour through Swiss refineries to convert the gold into kilogram bars of acceptable purity. It is possible that the U.S. government may have acquiesced in this form of payment in return for other political concessions having to do with a number of global uncertainties."

-----------------

U.S. bond yields (the interest the U.S. pays on its debt) are increasing because there is less demand for U.S. treasury bonds. Lenders are reluctant to buy U.S. government debt, but the U.S. government needs that money, so it must pay more. This reduces the value of the USD (i.e. increases inflation) and makes the USD a less attractive reserve currency (A good reserve currency holds its value.)*. Gold is just one alternative option, but it is something the U.S. actually has a fair amount of. The U.S. would likely be exporting Swiss francs now if it had a lot of those too.

Why is there less demand for U.S. bonds? The U.S. is accruing a lot of debt with high spending and reduced taxes at the same time AI companies are competing for investment dollars (i.e. loans). There's only so much capital to go around, so interest rates go up.

TL;DR: U.S. spends too much. Taxes too little. AI companies spend too much. Make too little. Investors want more interest to supply cash, so U.S. bond yields go up and USD value goes down. Anyone looking for stable currencies to hold start switching to gold (or others). No grand Chinese conspiracy is necessary.

____________

* The USD is doing well at the current moment, almost inexplicably, but the important thing is what lenders think it will do in the future.

YZF 3d ago

High rates can make the currency more attractive. Not less. Tends to strengthen the USD. So the next conclusion is also false.

But yes, higher yields can be related to demand, but they're not simply a function of demand. They relate to things like inflation expectations, and so the short term rates set by the Fed, and the risk premium. In this case likely the higher rates are not high due to demand but rather due to inflation expectations and the Fed having raised the overnight rate.

Bid to cover can be one estimate of demand and I'm not really seeing anything particularly exciting going on here: https://en.macromicro.me/charts/30431/us-10y-bid-to-cover-ra...

EGreg 3d ago

No, the top US export is still USD.

That is how we get all those imports cheaper than most countries. Trump just made a deal w Putin for example to import Russia’s diesel … in exchange for USD.

MiroslavPokorny 3d ago

The amount of diesel Russia will be exporting to world markets is barely a fraction of a days worth, 100s of thousands when the world needs 20M a day.

Its a dumb stunt for people who have no idea of the actual numbers.

znnajdla 3d ago

Mark my words, we will see war between Europe and the US in our generation’s lifetime. The latest spat between Trump and Zelensky is just the beginning.

herbst 3d ago

To be fair we are in some kind of quiet cold war since nearly all of Europe has to work against and around trumps sanctions and build up independence ASAP which makes orange man even more angry.

nunez 2d ago

Then there's the constant "war" happening in cybersec. So many of the really big incidents are state-sponsored!

SillyUsername 3d ago

Its 4am here, read the title bleary eyed and saw "God is now the top U.S. export", and thought, "yep that tracks".

How did it come to it that America supports the neo-Soviets, we have flying cars, AI is gradually taking over the world, billionaires own most of the world's wealth, and I just thought a heading like this is normal?

camgitt 3d ago

i liked it when it was pork

shikck200 3d ago

Other countries moving their gold out of the US, LOL

omgJustTest 3d ago

may 2026.

tgsovlerkhgsel 3d ago

That would be a very convenient way to fix the trade balance that Trump is so obsessed about...

throwaway89864 3d ago

The U.S. government confirmed that its gold reserves remain unchanged, although the definition of "gold," is undergoing modernization.

Following efficiency measures affecting independent oversight in FY2025, the transition is expected to substantially reduce storage costs and security requirements. Under the program, gold bars are exchanged for TrumpBarz™, a cryptocurrency developed through a sovereign–foreign public–private partnership. Its ownership structure is described as "fully transparent," and reportedly associated closely with Mr. Putin, a connection officials dismissed as "purely geographical, financial, and personal.". "This is the biggest heist in history," reported The Downhill, shortly before being informed of violating various national security directives and revocations of its press credentials. The Trump administration declined to comment, while Mr. Musk noted in his interview to us: "Storing digital certificates is much more efficient than storing gold bars. We have reduced the weight of America’s gold reserves by 100% without changing a single number in the spreadsheet."

throwawayffffas 3d ago

Straight up read God.

bongofizzbuzz 3d ago

God was exported to distant places like China, Japan, India by the church. Following is a great movie on that topic.

Silence - The Deconstruction of Faith

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yj7SGe7FcYE

throwawayffffas 3d ago

From Jehovah's witnesses to Scientology, and certain strains of evangelical Christianity. God (and aliens) is still a very export oriented industry in the US.

metalman 3d ago

ton for ton the US top export is CO², and it's largest import is O², or was, if it has slipped then that is the main reason behind the export of ag, as all of it is tied to actual industrial capacity

leopoldcongo 3d ago

All the gold was stolen from Africa or South America by the Europeans no?

matheusmoreira 3d ago

All the gold? Certainly not. That's just a meme at this point.

For example, Brazilians love to say that the Portuguese stole their gold. Even the highest estimates I could find amount to like 1000 tons of gold which works out to around 135 billion dollars today. Meanwhile, the government robs them of several times that amount every single year: tax revenue is currently around 815 billion dollars.

ShadowOfThePit 2d ago

Are you saying that taxation is theft, or is there something else going on in Brazil?

matheusmoreira 23h ago

In Brazil, taxation is theft. This is a country that taxes its population at Europe levels but delivers developing country tier services. You just know the money is going into the pockets of politicians, judges and other elites.

leopoldcongo 1d ago

Lol. Eurotheifs.com. Hosted on alibaba.com. Tracking euro thefts

ralph84 3d ago

The biggest gold mines by far are in the US, Russia, and other former Soviet republics.

throwaway2037 3d ago

No, it is much more diverse than that. See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lists_of_countries_by_mineral_...

herbst 3d ago

Swiss here. People literally sold it to us and bring it here for safety. No stealing as far as I know.

childintime 3d ago

Somehow I read this as "God is now the top U.S. export", and it made sense at multiple levels.

Of course the Americans would sell God. And their mother. Well some Americans would, and the law would be on their side.

Actually they'd sell their god fearing fellow Americans, their goodness, and make a product out of them. They're the gold of the USA, but they're being destroyed by the straw-man-God propaganda industry.

Money is a virus that has no problem destroying the host. People ritually sell what don't belong to them all the time. Like the air we breathe, the native American lands, state power, or land on the moon. "Don't care" equals great profit. How is this ever going to end well?

userbinator 3d ago

US currency says "In God We Trust", not "In Gold We Trust".

MiroslavPokorny 3d ago

And if America trusted god - they wouldnt need weapons because we all know prayer works.

cowlevel 3d ago

Just cast Protect From Missiles

throw73847939 3d ago

Gold is tiny compared to oil and other energy exports. I would more watch for drop in energy exports, and how US is screwing its partners right now!

Gold is now the top U.S. export (numismaticnews.net)