Netherlands Moves $10 Billion in Gold From the US

If you’re an expat in the Netherlands, you probably don’t spend much time thinking about where your central bank keeps its gold. This shift is worth a closer look, since it says something about what policymakers worry about right now. Between March and August this year, the Netherlands’ central bank, DNB, moved around 86 tonnes of Dutch gold. That’s a significant amount. It moved from New York and Ottawa to London, with some delivered to DNB’s own vault in the town of Zeist, in Utrecht.

DNB said the move was about being “better prepared for severe crises.” Here’s what that could mean.

What Happened?

The Netherlands holds around 612 to 613 tonnes of gold, worth roughly €72 billion, or $83.8 billion. Like most nations, it doesn’t keep all its gold in one place, in case a single storage location runs into trouble.

Before the change, here’s how the split worked out:

New York 31.3%
Ottawa 19.7%
London 18.1%
Zeist 30.8%

Here’s how that split looks now:

London 32.1%
New York 18.5%
Ottawa 18.5%
Zeist 30.8%

DNB carried out the switch in two steps.

It sold around 59 tonnes of Dutch gold in New York and bought the equivalent in London. It shipped over 27 tonnes from Ottawa and New York to Zeist, here in the Netherlands.
At the same time, it sent an equal amount from Zeist to London, to satisfy global market rules.

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.”

The bank said it wants its gold where it can act on it quickly. In its own words, gold held further afield “cannot be utilized as quickly and directly” in a crisis.

Why Now?

DNB stopped short of naming specific dangers. Still, the timing speaks for itself. The Netherlands pulled more gold out of the US than Canada did. Frederic Schneider, a senior fellow at the Middle East Council on Global Affairs, offered a more direct explanation. States have sought greater control over their gold for more than a decade, he said. What’s changed is the political tone. Since Trump’s second term began, his “increasingly bellicose and erratic behavior even towards his allies,” along with the wider pattern of using the dollar and trade as leverage, has made governments nervous.

Since last year, the US and Canada have been locked in a heavy tariff dispute. Washington placed duties on Canadian steel and aluminum, along with cars, then added a separate 50% tariff on $20 billion in Canadian goods. Ottawa responded with tariffs on more than 700 US products.

Other factors also played a role, such as the war in Iran. Washington also began military action in Venezuela, with Cuba possibly next. None of this is confined to some far-off region. Conflicts like these add to the uncertainty surrounding whichever country holds a nation’s gold reserves.

The relationship between the EU and Washington is strained. Trump reintroduced the idea of the US acquiring Greenland and warned of tariffs against countries standing in the way. After the Strait of Hormuz was shut down, he told European nations to “go get your own oil.” When the United Kingdom didn’t join the war, he said the relationship was “obviously not what it was.”

In February 2022, the EU froze around $300 billion in Russian central bank assets, about half of Russia’s reserves. In 2024, the EU and G7 countries agreed to use profits from the frozen funds to support a $50 billion loan to Ukraine. By December of last year, the freeze had become permanent.

Many assumed a major economy’s reserves would remain out of reach. Once that assumption was challenged, a difficult question followed. If reserves can be frozen, what’s the case for holding gold with a central bank tied to a government you no longer trust?

The Netherlands Isn’t The Only One

This is part of a wider pattern. In January, France’s central bank moved gold from the Federal Reserve in New York back to Paris, saying the move was down to a technical upgrade and better returns.

Not long before that, Germany made a similar move, shifting over 600 tonnes of gold from New York to Frankfurt. The stated goal was to secure its national reserves.

A growing number of European countries are choosing to keep their gold closer to home, in case wider conditions deteriorate.

What This Means

Not much changes day to day. The price of groceries or everyday goods won’t shift because Dutch gold moved from vaults in New York to London.

Still, when a central bank moves tens of billions of dollars in gold and talks about crisis preparedness, it says something about how it views the relationship between Europe and the United States. DNB says it hopes the day never comes when it needs to use the gold. Even so, actively planning for that scenario isn’t exactly reassuring.

People used to assume that major international partnerships would hold indefinitely, and that the same players would always be at the table. That assumption is now shifting. As national banks rethink their approach, it’s worth looking at the wider picture.