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

159 pointsby iamnothere5 hours ago90 comments

jpollock 3 hours 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

samudrijan 3 hours ago

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

progval 3 hours ago

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

codethief 3 hours 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 29 minutes 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.

Crunchified 6 minutes 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?

morsch 3 hours 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 3 hours 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 3 hours 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 2 hours 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.

Gravityloss 2 hours ago

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

JumpCrisscross 2 hours ago

> I imagine a convoy of small but heavily armored ships

It’s typically flown [1].

[1] https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politic...

m-i-l 2 hours ago

And in the past it has been shipped in boxes labelled "fish"[0].

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Fish

JumpCrisscross 2 hours ago

Alas, goldfish wouldn’t be invented until 1962 [1].

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goldfish_(cracker)

curmudgeon22 30 minutes ago

Not that that stops heist: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toronto_Pearson_International_...

tarsierscripter an hour ago

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

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

Loughla 10 minutes 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.

csomar 3 hours 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).

iamnothere 3 hours 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?

dyauspitr 3 hours ago

Probably all of it.

mqus 3 hours 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.

rkagerer an hour ago

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

jandrewrogers an hour ago

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

JumpCrisscross 2 hours 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 an hour 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 43 minutes 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.

asphodele an hour 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 4 minutes ago

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

Holy fucking badass move.

XCSme 3 hours ago

I thought it was tokens

Aachen 2 hours 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?!)

cpgxiii an hour 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.

JumpCrisscross an hour ago

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

graemep an hour 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.

XCSme an hour ago

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

So many trillion-dollar valued AI-focused companies.

WJW 41 minutes ago

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

JumpCrisscross an hour ago

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

XCSme an hour ago

Title doesn't mention good specifically.

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

JumpCrisscross 36 minutes 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.

PowerElectronix 44 minutes ago

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

tim333 10 minutes ago

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

erkt an hour ago

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

WJW 37 minutes 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.

chasil 27 minutes 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.

_ache_ 3 hours ago

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

declan_roberts 3 hours 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.

jack_pp 3 hours ago

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

scotty79 2 hours 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 2 hours 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.

theendisney 2 hours ago

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

KellyCriterion 2 hours ago

LOL

Massivly surprised to see a link to this storyline/paradigm here on HN, great!

Cheers! :-))

theendisney an hour ago

You'd be surprised what livered onions go for on Zeta Reticula.

KellyCriterion an hour ago

I really like this conspiracy behind this story/tale!

If you belive in such stories, it may explain why humans are so focused on Gold, and not other precious metals, which are much more rare.

The idea behind the story is just great, isnt it? The idea of whatever space travelling species to come here to mine for gold with human "robots" is really cool. While they could have landed on asteroids which much more Gold-per-ton, they chosed earth because the bio machines available here didnt need any "outer planetary" maintenance or refills?

:-D

edit: and they can replicate easily given enough environment, so you do not need spareparts when e.g. a disk fails?

scotty79 2 hours 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.

_ache_ 2 hours 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.

Supermancho 2 hours 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.

iamnothere 2 hours 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?

deadbabe 2 hours ago

Why is a bitcoin worth anything?

coralreef an hour ago

Why is anything worth anything?

The short but final answer: because other people want it.

AnimalMuppet an hour 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.

scotty79 2 hours 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.

_ache_ 2 hours 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 an hour 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.

f001 3 hours 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 2 hours ago

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

IAmGraydon 3 hours ago

They think the Trump administration will confiscate it.

Dumblydorr 2 hours ago

Whatever would give them that idea…

bigmadshoe 2 hours 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.

throwawayffffas 2 hours ago

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

legitster 2 hours 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.

setopt 2 hours ago

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

memcg an hour 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.

beloch an hour 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 26 minutes 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...

manlymuppet 3 hours 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?

ceroxylon 3 hours 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 3 hours 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 2 hours ago

I feel like pharmaceuticals and aircraft are quite expensive by mass

ashdksnndck 3 hours 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.

bigmadshoe 2 hours ago

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

metalman 2 hours 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

EA-3167 3 hours ago

I doubt the veracity of this article. All previous metal exports from the US, including and not limited to gold, came third in exports as of mid-year.

https://logisticsmaterial.com/trade/americas-biggest-exports...

edit: A better source that uses Census BEA data: https://ustradesignals.com/statistics/exports-by-industry

and says the same thing.

edit2: A third source using different data saying the same thing. https://tradeint.com/insights/us-export-data/#elementor-toc_...

thisisthenewme 3 hours ago

The article that you posted seems to be LLM slop with no references to their claims and the article in the post references data from bea.gov so :shrug:

ceejayoz 3 hours ago

Why'd you trust this particular article?

https://imgur.com/a/bAbAFru

iAMkenough an hour ago

All of these links are from publications I've never heard of, and have a hard time independently verifying their credibility.

For instance, TradeInt advertises it is trusted by Samsung, but I can't find any record of Samsung utilizing TradeInt for anything. TradeInt advertises a 5-star rating on platforms like Product Hunt (YC S14), yet the person who created the listing created their account when TradeInt launched and has no followers or other activity since 2024.

They all appear to be blog spam, from my perspective.

Anyone (or any AI) can publish anything to confirm any viewpoint. What makes those links worth sharing?

throwawayffffas 2 hours ago

Straight up read God.

leopoldcongo 3 hours ago

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

ralph84 2 hours ago

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

throw73847939 3 hours 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!