[mattalex]

Germany already repatriated about half of its gold reserves between 2013 and 2017 from paris and new york to frankfurt.

There has been a recent (as in "18th of march" recent) petition to the Bundestag to repatriate the gold.

The reason not to repatriate the remaining gold back then is because Germany has substantial trade with the US, which is why Germany held gold in new york to begin with: It's the easiest way to resolve USD-Euro currency exchange at the central bank level (this is also why germany got rid of the paris gold reserves: with the euro you don't need currency exchange anymore).

Also, as you mentioned, the idea of "officially" repatriating gold with the current administration is quite dicey. It is very possible that the correct way of resolving this is to just stop buying gold in new york and let the currency exchange flux deal with the slow unwinding of the reserves without explicit repatriation.

[bell-cot]

> [...] why Germany held gold in new york to begin with: It's the easiest way to resolve USD-Euro currency exchange at the central bank level [...]

Interesting. Might you know how much US gold is held in Frankfurt (Germany), for the same purpose?

[mattalex]

Effectively none. The US has a huge trade deficit with Germany/Europe so there is practically never a case where the US receives gold from Germany: It's always more then offset by the deficit.

The equivalent for the US would be the consumption goods that are already flowing into the US. I.e. US gets goods but doesn't sell enough to Germany, so the difference to maintain the total exchange rate is the Gold.

That's also why it was trivial for france to repatriate its gold compared to germany: Germany holds about 10x the amount of gold in the US compared to France (France was ~120 tons, Germany is roughly 1200 tons: France earned its gold through different trade).

That's also why it is such a complex thing to repatriate German reserves: France took almost 1 year to repatriate its gold. For Germany, the efforts would be decade spanning (though maybe with recent changes there is a little more urgency).