Gold Overtakes Oil and Aircraft as America's Top Export
Gold is now the top U.S. export
Since October 2025, U.S. gold exports have outranked oil, pharmaceuticals, and aircraft, with February 2026 tonnage possibly setting an all-time record. Most shipments go to Swiss refiners, Hong Kong, and London, while U.S. reserves remain unchanged, suggesting the metal comes from new mine output and recycling. The author speculates that foreign central banks, especially China, are shifting away from dollar assets and toward gold.
Among all foreign central banks combined, the value of their gold reserves now exceeds their holdings of U.S. Treasury debt.
- jpollock
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.
- JumpCrisscross
> 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...
- XCSme
I thought it was tokens
- PowerElectronix
Speaks volumes of the results the policies to make the US a manufacturing and exporting country are getting.
- erkt
With the proper facilities, isn’t it already economical to transmute mercury to gold via neutron bombardment?
- legitster
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.
- omgJustTest
may 2026.
- manlymuppet
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?