The commercial war unleashed by Donald Trump as president of the United States against the rest of the world has unleashed a wave of responses among numerous countries, mainly European, to what they consider an offense against their sovereignty and commercial interests.
In fact, Trump’s measures are being so aggressive against Western economies that include the conservative and liberal sectors that were most favorable to their victory before the US elections, are already being shown critics with the decisions of the tycoon.
Beyond that, there is a European country that has a very atypical situation and to which the tariffs imposed by the United States would be making them rethink a very important aspect. We talk about Germany, one of the great economies – if not, the most – of the entire old continent, which is located at a crossroads, or at least, that seems.
And, Germany has the second largest gold reserve in the world. However, it presents a peculiarity: a large part of it (37%, around 1,236 tons, valued at 113,000 million euros) is in the Federal Reserve of the US. This decision is linked to the Cold War, and now, due to the tariff measures imposed by Donald Trump, it seems to be in a key moment.
Recently and as published by the German media Bild, Politician Marco Wanderwitz, former representative of the CDU conservative formation (German Democistian Union) has stated that in response to tariffs, a debate about whether it would be a good option to recover such reserves and repatriate them to Germany: “Of course, the issue arises now now,” he said.
These statements have found a support in Markus Ferber, MEP of the CSU (Christian Social Union present in Bavaria), who demanded greater control of the gold reserves of the country that are abroad. “The official representatives of the Bundesbank must personally count the gold bullion and document the results,” he said.
It should be noted that the sending of German gold reserves to New York is due to a reason for security, furto of instability in Europe during the cold war. However, there are critical voices with the decision to repatriate or control it carefully, and consider that it would be more useful to sell them progressively, something that Norway already did 22 years ago.
For his part, the governor of Bundesbank, Joachim Nagel, was reassuring and pointed out that the Federal Reserve is a “trusted partner for the storage of our gold reserves”, and said that it is a subject that does not take away his dream. But these statements do not seem to have calmed the population, who see in these reserves as a national symbol. For this reason, there are already many voices that ask that gold reserves return to Germany.
