The Netherlands has moved billions of dollars of its gold reserves out of the United States and Canada, and transferred them to the United Kingdom amid global geopolitical tensions.
On Wednesday, the Dutch Central Bank (DNB) said it had moved the gold reserves to ensure it is “better prepared for severe crises”.
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While DNB did not specify which crises it might need to be prepared for, the US is currently engaged in a bitter trade tariff war with Canada, while Washington is conducting a war in Iran and has led operations in Venezuela and around Cuba in recent months.
Furthermore, tensions between Europe and the US have risen since the start of the US war on Iran in February this year, as Trump has made his displeasure at the reluctance of European allies to join the war known.
In a statement, 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.”
How many gold reserves does the Netherlands have? What does this mean for the US?
Here’s what we know:
How much does the Netherlands have in gold reserves?
The Netherlands holds 612.4 tonnes of gold, valued at approximately 72.2 billion euros ($83.8bn), in gold reserves. These can serve as security in times of potential crises, where regular financial systems could fail.
As part of their standard risk diversification strategies, countries tend to spread their gold reserves around different locations to ensure the greatest security.
DNB spreads these gold reserves across different locations, including its own Cash Centre in Zeist, as well as in central banks in the UK, US and Canada.
Up until now, Zeist held 30.8 percent of the Netherlands’ gold reserves; London held 18.1 percent; New York, 31.3 percent; and Ottawa, 19.7 percent.
Following relocation of gold reserves from North America to the UK, the spread is now as follows: Zeist, 30.8 percent; London, 32.1 percent; New York, 18.5 percent; and Ottowa, 18.5 percent.
How has the gold been moved?
The relocated gold was valued at about 10.11 billion euros ($11.73bn) at the end of 2025. This was estimated at 10.34 billion euros as of 3pm (13:00 GMT) on Wednesday in the Netherlands.
It was moved in two ways: By selling gold in one location and buying it in another; and by physically transporting gold bars from one place to another.
According to DNB, the transfer of gold reserves began with the bank first selling about 59 tonnes of gold (worth about $8.3bn) in New York and then buying gold in London.
“More than 27 tonnes of gold (approximately $3.84bn) was also physically transferred from the United States and Canada to Zeist, and a similar quantity of gold that meets the international market standards was transferred from Zeist to London, preventing the need to remelt gold bars,” the bank said.
In all, about $10.7bn in gold has been moved from New York, while a little more than $1bn has been shifted from Ottawa, at the December 2025 valuations.
“Following the recent relocation, the geographical spread of the Dutch gold reserves is now more balanced, with both the United States and Canada each holding 18.5 percent,” DNB added.
Why did the Netherlands move this gold in this way?
According to DNB, the decision to move gold – and to do so in two ways – is part of its risk diversification strategy.
It stated: “Combining the processes of buying and selling and physical transport has allowed DNB to spread the risks associated with such a complex physical gold relocation operation, while also ensuring efficiency and cost-consciousness.
“Moreover, experience of both approaches will be useful in the event that another relocation is required during a potential future crisis, and one of the two approaches proves impossible due to circumstances at the time. This also fits in with DNB’s efforts to increase its crisis preparedness.”
Why might the Netherlands be moving gold away from the US?
In its press statement on Tuesday, DNB said it is seeking to ensure its gold is “easily tradeable” and highlighted that it considers London a safe place to keep it.
“Keeping a larger share of the gold reserves in London strengthens the function of gold as an anchor of trust. Gold is seen as the ultimate reserve asset because it is ideally suited to hedge extreme systemic risks,” DNB said.
“The gold reserves held in New York and Ottawa cannot be utilised as quickly and directly in such a situation,” the bank stated.
DNB has not explained what “systemic risks” it might be hedging against.
However, the Netherlands has removed far more gold from the US than it has from Canada, and analysts speculate there may be a number of reasons to fear instability in transatlantic relations.
Laurent Schwartz, president of the Paris-based National Gold Counter, a trading facility, told the UK’s Guardian newspaper: “The current political context in the United States might also push certain central banks into favouring other storage locations.”
First, Canada and the US have been locked in a trade war since 2025. The Trump administration hit Ottawa with tariffs on its key sectors of steel, aluminium and automobiles last year. Then, in August this year, Washington imposed an additional 50 percent tariff on $20bn of Canadian goods after trade talks between the two countries failed to yield an agreement.
In response, Ottawa unveiled retaliatory measures, levying tariffs against more than 700 US products, also valued at $20bn. These tariffs are tiered at 15, 25 and 50 percent, and are slated to come into effect on September 8.
Second, besides the various trade wars the Trump administration has been engaged in during President Donald Trump’s second term in the White House, the US-Israel war on Iran is ongoing – with no diplomatic or military end in sight – and Washington has also ramped up military operations around Cuba.
In January, US forces abducted Venezuela’s then-President Nicolas Maduro in a lightning military operation and transported him to the US to stand trial on drugs-and-guns charges. Since then, the US has struck deals to take control of a large part of Venezuela’s oil industry.
Third, diplomatic relations between European countries and the Trump administration have become more strained both as a result of the US’s trade wars and Trump’s anger that European nations have refused to join the war against Iran.
Last year, tempers between the US and Europe flared when Trump reiterated his ambitions to acquire Greenland and threatened European countries that got in his way with more trade tariffs.
In April this year, Trump ranted at European countries, telling them to “go get your own oil” from the Gulf, where the war has caused the closure of the Strait of Hormuz, triggering oil and gas shortages and chaos in world energy markets.
“All of those countries that can’t get jet fuel because of the strait of Hormuz, like the United Kingdom, which refused to get involved in the decapitation of Iran”, should buy US oil instead, Trump wrote on social media.
His comments followed news that France had barred Israeli planes from flying weapons through its airspace and Italy had refused permission for US bombers to land in Sicily. Spain refused permission for the US to use its bases and airspace for the war on Iran and, while the UK did allow the US to use its bases, then-Prime Minister Keir Starmer told parliament that the UK would not get involved in the war. Trump responded that the UK-US “relationship is obviously not what it was”.
Fourth, when the European Union first froze approximately $300bn of Russian central bank sovereign assets in February 2022 just days after Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, many saw this as a new precedent.
While central banks have long had the ability to freeze the assets they hold belonging to other nations, they have rarely done so – and not on this scale. The frozen assets represented around half of Russia’s total $640bn wealth. By targeting a G20 super economy, the EU broke with a long-held tradition that the reserves of a major nuclear and economic power were out of bounds, under standard international financial norms.
The EU went a step further in 2024 when it and G7 nations agreed to a mechanism to utilise profits generated by these frozen assets for a $50bn loan package for Ukraine. Then, in December 2025, the bloc agreed make the freezing of Russian sovereign assets indefinite, thus removing the need to vote every six months on extending the asset freeze.
As a result, countries may begin calculating that it is high-risk to hold reserves with the central banks of other countries where the government or leaders are considered unpredictable.
Have other countries moved gold from the US?
The Netherlands is not the first country to move its gold reserves from the US this year.
In January, Banque de France moved 129 tonnes of gold, worth about $17bn, which had been held in the Federal Reserve Bank of New York since July 2025, back to France, citing a technical upgrade and seeking a better return as the reasons. To do this, the bank sold gold in New York and bought gold bars in Paris.
Between 2013 and 2017, Germany moved more than 600 tonnes of gold (worth about $77.5bn) from New York to Frankfurt to secure its national reserves, it said.
