Some European countries have started moving their gold reserves out of the U.S.

Donald Trump and his team haven’t exactly been subtle about their gold fixation. Since the president returned to power, Americans have seen an emphasis on everything from “Gold Cards” to a “Golden Dome” to a “Golden Fleet” of U.S. battleships. (And don’t get me started on the many gold trinkets Trump plastered on the walls of the Oval Office.)

Recently, however, gold has been in the news for an entirely different reason. The Wall Street Journal reported:

The Dutch central bank shifted the location of 78 metric tons of gold, worth $11 billion at today’s prices, from vaults beneath the streets of Manhattan to London, saying it would improve the ability to trade the metal in a pinch.

The high-security operation took several months to pull off. Some of the gold was sold in the U.S. and repurchased in the U.K. Other bars were flown to Europe, likely in the storage hold of planes. The result: Almost a third of the Dutch gold reserve is in London and a still chunky 19% in New York, flipping their earlier positions.

“In view of increasing geopolitical unrest, DNB is strengthening its crisis preparedness,” the central bank said in a statement. (DNB stands for De Nederlandsche Bank, the central bank of the Netherlands.)

The Journal’s report added, “The bank didn’t specify what it meant by geopolitical unrest.”

This wasn’t an isolated development. Writing for The Bulwark last week, MS NOW host Catherine Rampell noted, “This follows a similar move by France’s central bank, which recently sold off about $15 billion of bullion held in New York, replacing it with gold bars stored in Paris instead. And for the past year, Germany and Italy — the second- and third-largest holders of gold reserves, respectively, after the United States — have been debating whether to pull their gold from U.S. vaults, too.”

Commenting on the implications of the developments, Paul Krugman explained that the “direct economic or financial impact of these actions will be minimal. … But the symbolism is chilling. America is no longer trusted.”

The next time Trump talks about how “hot” the United States is, and how desperate foreign nations are to make investments on American soil, it’s worth keeping this in mind.

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