Let’s discuss gold imports and exports, trade data, and the impact on GDP. 
Nonmonetary Gold Definition
Nonmonetary gold is any gold that is not owned by a central bank or government monetary authority. It includes private investment bullion bars, coins, and raw gold dust traded by individuals, corporations, and commercial banks. It does not include gold in commercial products or jewelry.
How Does the BEA Treat Nonmonetary Gold?
BEA: “The value of exports and imports of nonmonetary gold is removed and replaced with an adjustment, which is calculated as the difference between domestic production and industrial use of gold.”
When the BEA transitions from the monthly trade report to calculating the final Gross Domestic Product (GDP), the BEA completely deletes (subtracts out) the trade report’s nonmonetary gold numbers.
Why?
Most of that gold isn’t being “consumed” or “invested” in factories—it’s just being shuffled from a private vault in London to a private vault in New York as an inflation hedge or tariff play.
Since swapping paper dollars for gold bars changes nothing about real U.S. economic production, the BEA strips it out of GDP completely to keep it GDP-neutral.
Nonmonetary Gold Exports and Imports
- 2026 Q2 Exports: 27 billion
- 2026 Q2 Imports: 6 billion
- 2026 Q2 Quarter-to-Date Net Exports: 19 billion
- 2026 Q3 Quarter-to-Date Exports: 8 billion
- 2026 Q3 Quarter-to-Date Imports: 6 billion
- 2026 Q3 Quarter-to-Date Net Exports: 2 billion
Historic numbers are official BEA data.
The current month numbers are summations from monthly trade reports and are not seasonally adjusted. They should be treated as rough estimates.
Nonmonetary Gold Net Exports
The Q3 quarter-to-date net nonmonetary gold exports are 2 billion, down 19 billion (so far) from Q2.
Net Exports Change from Previous Quarter
2026 quarter-to-date numbers are a next export disaster. -93 billion (estimate so far) would be the largest net trade number since -222 in 2025 Q1.
Excluding 2025 Q1, one would have to go back to 2022 Q1 for a larger net negative trade balance of -104 billion.
Historical Context
| Trade Era | Net Exports Excluding Nonmonetary Gold | Underlying Economic Catalyst | Macroeconomic GDP Impact |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2020 Q2 (Pandemic Nadir) | -$181.0 Billion | Initial global COVID-19 lockups freezing international shipping lanes and halting exports. | Contributed to the historic -31.2% annualized collapse in headline GDP. |
| 2022 Q1 (Stimulus Aftershock) | -$104.0 Billion | Post-lockdown supply chain crunch driven by trillions in domestic consumer stimulus checks. | Substantial import surge that pushed headline real GDP growth negative (-1.6%). |
| 2025 Q1 (Tariff front-Running) | -$222.0 Billion | Panic-driven corporate stockpiling and front-running of threatened global import tariffs. | Artificially depressed GDPNow models until permanently changed by Pat Higgins. |
| Current Q3 2026 (Estimate So Far) | -$93.0 Billion | Insatiable domestic corporate demand for AI infrastructure, data center assets, and semiconductors. | Driving a severe -2.69 percentage point subtraction from current GDPNow calculation. |
Despite that GDPNow subtraction, the GDPNow estimate as of October 6, is a lofty 3.7 percent.
Net Exports Change from Previous Quarter
After stripping out huge swings in nonmonetary gold, the chart roughly shows expected direction and magnitude of net exports to net GDP contributions.
Synopsis
- Gold ceased to be a major factor in trade data fore Q3 as net net exports quarter-to-date (2 months) are only 2 billion.
- Net exports excluding gold are approximately -93 billion for the first two months on 2026 Q3 as overall imports surged
Excluding “Liberation Day” Tariff Distortions, Trade Deficit Biggest in History
On October 6, I noted Excluding “Liberation Day” Tariff Distortions, Trade Deficit Biggest in History
Let’s check in on Trump’s Tariff Liberation policy.
Also note Long-Term Bond Yields Surge to New 24-Year Highs
What happened to Bessent’s “I am the house” theory?
Trump’s tariffs did not and will not reduce the trade deficit. And Bessent’s foolish statements came back to bite him.
the gold standard on books on this subject. pardon the pun. he worked at FED during great depression, too.
The Power of Gold: The History of an Obsession is a non-fiction book written by renowned economic historian Peter L. Bernstein and published in 2000 by Wiley. You can read reader reviews and community insights on Goodreads.
Overview & Core Themes
Key Details
Gold is useful during economic hard times, not least because of its ability to hold its value during hyperinflation periods. Surviving the Economic Collapse is a great book written by someone who lived through such a hyperinflation period this century in Argentina. https://ferfal.blogspot.com/
What happened to Bessent’s “I am the house” theory?
Termites. Millions of termites.
I find it interesting that it seems many people assume that PMs are solely for doomsday scenarios.
I used to be a gold bug, and assumed that the current order had to collapse because history, etc. However, I now take a more nuanced view. Yes, society could collapse, and I’d rather face that collapse with them than without them. Maybe they’ll come in handy and maybe they won’t, but better to have them, I think. However, a Mad Max type outcome I think is fairly low likelihood.
On the other hand, thinking that PMs only have value in these scenarios is IMO not very nuanced. Governments have and will continue to debase, borrow, and continue with fiscally unsound policies. Over time, gold has done what it is supposed to do – store value. Which means that the price has gone up, because the power of the dollar continues to debase. Does gold move EXACTLY in concert with the dollar debasement? No, of course not. But if you hold it over time, it will protect you. I’ve held for decades. I actually got lucky and sold a decent amount of silver in mid January before the Jan 30 collapse (I just felt that the PMs had moved too far, too fast). Frankly I wish I had sold a lot more, tax consequences be damned (yes that check was painful to write).
The point is that PMs are not a binary ‘end of the world’ or not play. They represent a diversification away from degrading fiat dollars and government stupidity. I am certain that both of those things will continue, and I continue to diversify accordingly.
bingo. winner. in 2011 and 2012, the lows of the panic of 2008 r/e bust in phoenix AZ……..when prices two family houses reached 20% cap rates, silver also reached her highs at the time. by dumb luck i payed for a number of houses outright with silver and many i just sold my silver to dealers for exchange with cash to purchase the aforementioned houses. seems to me in studying gold and silver over the centuries, they work best after calamities occur. people reach for the tried and true forms of assets and money. gold and silver. btw those dozen or so 2 family house prices bounced back. sold them at the high in 2022 and 2023……..by dumb luck.
I don’t know any more than anyone else, but it seems to me that we should plan for and hope for martial law in the event of inflation leading to disorder. It won’t be pleasant, but it will be better than seeing society dissolve into chaos and cannibalism.
You must remember that we won’t be quietly collapsing on our own. There is no reason for the whole world to collapse simultaneously, and China at least will be watching and seeking to take advantage.
I agree that gold is a good bet anyway. Idiotic government can go on getting worse for I think centuries, with interludes when some competent ruler like Trump makes it look as if civilization can still be saved. When I was younger, we had President Reagan and Mrs. Thatcher.
To what degree will gold in US dollars devalue in the coming severe recession where gold will be sold to pay down debt denominated in US dollars?
XAU, a proxy for gold is following a 3rd Quarter 2000 20/43/45 of 50 quarter fractal series ending the 1st Quarter of 2028. The 26 year trendline suggests a valuation 90% lower than the current XAU value and 92% lower than the XAU peak valuation.
Think of juggling your gold coins and AK-47 at the gas station while trying to get gas, in the middle of street riot chaos. Some apocalyptic scenarios have endless incalculable frictions. Life would be nasty, brutish and short, any way you game it out. Here in the USA, aren’t there more guns than humans? That’s why today’s government mismanagement bodes to fumble something we built over centuries, especially the 20th.
I think of the tale of Leo Melamed’s ancestors, with a sudden need to vacate western Europe, stuffing gold coins in metal toothpaste tubes. Modern scanners and detectors would probably make that impossible, and lead to arrest. While checking IDs, a German border guard occupied with lighting a cigarette waved them by. Again, very hard today. (Melamed survived to helm the Chicago Mercantile Exchange.)
Maybe a smartphone and crypto app fix that? I reckon people everywhere with rabid hunger and guns wouldn’t make it so easy.
As with Trump’s nuke scenario this week, my main plan, though I haven’t had a drink in 30 years, would be a rush to get lots and lots of vodka and a good rooftop view of the show, or maybe just intense meditation. Perhaps things would find an equilibrium.
Short of that, again looking for lazy convenience and less stringent scenarios, I hold some GLTR, an ETF had holds a basket of actual precious metals.
bribing is the easy answer. when leaving russia in the 90s, i had to pay a bribe, the security guard and female clerk taking my plane ticket, for the right to board the plane.
I agree – money is the more important thing.
Have some gold coins in one-tenth oz. size, for easy dispensing.
I live near the Canadian border & plan to lay aside some of their currency. Just in case.
for the dopes that accept paper currency for sure i use it. gold is money and has done way better than stocks or real estate for the first 26 years of this century. however the truth of the matter is smart people will accept silver and gold and copper for goods and services. been doing it my whole life. so did my parents. they were born in 1916 and lived through the great depression and world war. silver and gold always accepted even when it was declared “illegal” by idiot governments like FDR or defaulted on by LBJ and Nixon
Trump keeps claiming that the rest of the world respects America again. Yet the movement of monetary gold out of US vaults by foreign central banks suggests a rather different story.
Alongside the declining dollar share of global reserves, it’s one of several quantitative indicators of a (potentially) terminal decline in confidence in the US.
Of course, that’s distinct from the non-monetary gold movements discussed in this article. I’m not sure if these monetary movements makes a material difference to the US, but it would be good for somebody to wack Trump round the head with some figures from time to time.
” … a (potentially) terminal decline in confidence in the US. …”
If they don’t love you, maybe some of them will still trade with some of you. The US has lots of cards, in tech, oil, other resources and advantages such as rivers and ports, military, capital markets, some rule of law (comparatively). Courts still generally enforce contracts as made (though Trump does his best to screw that up too).
So I don’t see a linear descent to zero, or a binary up or down outcome. We may be diminished.
Gold has practical problems for when the apocalypse comes.
I’ve never read a single story anywhere during any of the past wars where gold was used to save somebody from a war torn nation. I’ve seen it in the movies but never read it in real life news story. Maybe someone will find ONE story to post here.
Having said all that, I do own a small amount of gold and silver, just enough to carry undeclared across the border for that 0.01% chance it comes in handy.
The more practical thing to do however is to convert gold to digital currency and then transmit it anywhere in the world where no government needs to know about it and can’t seize it. Practically unlimited amounts too but it’s only for people with functioning brains and knowledge of the global monetary system and border pitfalls.
I’ve never understood the idea of the economic apocalypse. The Great Depression showed that the government is quite capable of stepping in and putting a floor under the economy.
But let’s assume some disaster strikes and the government can’t. Everything collapses. What are you going to trade gold for? Food? What happens when no one can produce food anymore? Or guns or ammo? Did you spend a life “stacking” so you could be the last one who starves to death?
Wouldn’t it make just a touch more sense that we work together to make our systems more sustainable and resilient? I tend to think the apocalypse folks actually want the world to collapse because they think they can come out on top. But they won’t. The people who will come out on top are the people who bypassed civilization to begin with like the !Kung people in SW Africa or native people’s of the Amazon and New Guinea.
are you drunk or just fucking around. don’t worry, in the end times rapture, baby jesus comes back and smites the sinners and believers rise up to heaven for their 72 virgins……..
Well now you understand why a wise master said, “the meek shall inherit the earth” because those far off “primitive” villages, the ones that sustain themselves off of the river or sea with no need for modern anything shall survive just fine. They may not even notice the modern world is collapsing around them. most don’t have tv, internet, radio or even electricity.
Perhaps when desperate people show up they may figure it out.
But one possible scenario is the Yellowstone caldera erupting. It would put 10 meters of ash over most of north america. Nothing would grow for years so having stock piles of dry goods and being able to move will be the only thing to save you.
We all saw what happened during a mild pandemic too.
i’ve met hundreds of folks in brooklyn from places like nazi germany to viet nam to russia that were “saved” by travelling with a handful of gold coins. in AZ tons of mexican folks travel with plata and oro across borders. my pals from zimbabwe backgrounds would LOL at your analysis. your little scenario of declaring 2 coins is downright funny and stupid and shows how easy your life has been. no offense. of course. i enjoy your analysis of things.
Well why don’t you post some news articles because “I know people that escaped x,y,z” is the same as “I know people kidnapped by aliens on spaceships.”
We have plenty of wars and millions of refugees all over the place yet no “gold coins saved my ass stories” anywhere in media or is that just a vast conspiracy against gold?
Common occurrences are unlikely to result in news stories. People have been paying money/bribes to save their lives for thousands of years. Whether it is gold or cash or jewelry or food or anything else of value. What has no value when the grid, including Internet and cell phone service, goes down and you need it most is digital currency.
The best strategy is diversification.
i bribed border guards in more than one country in my first 66 years. hell, listen to jim rogers speak about this. investment biker fame. he’s the best man for understanding world wide travel and living and investing. he loves gold, too.
wtf are you talking about. news articles. yea, the wall street journal is the answer to life’s questions. you are an arrogant fuck. i don’t give a flying shit if you believe me or not. it’s actually kind of funny to find out how naive you are regardless of the number of countries you have stamped on your little passport. i was in russia in the 90s. silver and gold coins worked for everything.
And yet you can’t seem to find a single written story anywhere. Heck Anne Frank’s diary made it out of Nazi Germany before any of your gold stories have….and that’s the clutch!
what the fuck are you asking for? news stories on what. you are an idiot. yea, nobody ever left nazi germany, ussr, rhodesia….mexico…… viet nam with gold. my god dude. you sound like a lunatic. funny thing is i owned 10percent of a newspaper. you really are arrogant and ignorant. the worst combination. i give you 5 michelin stars for dumbfuckery and douchebaggery.
You won’t find written stories that convey a message that our authorities don’t want conveyed. By the way, I haven’t read Anne Frank’s “diary,” but people I respect have written that it is a load of rubbish. Messages that our authorities DO want DO get published, regardless of whether they are true.
When I was in Holland as a tourist, we were shown “Anne Frank’s house,” and we were told a sad little story about how her father had a box of some sort that was only given to retiring German military officers after World War One, and the evil Gestapo officer who arrested him was kind enough to say that he would make sure that the people who he was handed over to would know that this Jew was a German military hero of the First World War. I’m not saying it wasn’t true, because I don’t know.
Bureaucrats are rather good at covering up the fact that some of them can be bought, I think. Remember that in bad times, they will be starving too, and some of them will know just how evil the laws they have to administer are, so I am not saying that the ones who take bribes are the worst ones. The worst ones in some ways are the ones that are stupid enough to believe what they are told by the higher-ups.
People who own gold don’t talk about it.
And they never declare it, lol.
there are books published on this topic. read bernstein’s “power of gold”. his book on insurance business is also the best book on history of insurance. “against the gods”. gold has always been both jewelry, religious icons and art and also money. you really seem so naive on this subject.
folks fleeing nam:
suitcase of south viet money – worthless
suitcase of jade – needed an appraisal
suitcase of PM – converted on the spot
I’m only quoting impressions here, but my impression is that the reason the Byzantine Empire survived so much longer than the Roman Empire of the West (the other half of the later Roman Empire) is that the Byzantines, although they were very corrupt and bureaucratic, did have the good sense to maintain a sound currency, whereas the West didn’t.
If you had to bribe an official, you could offer him money of real value. In the West, there was nothing to bribe him with, so you had to fight him or give up whatever you wanted to do.
Any light that can be shed on this by better scholars would be appreciated.
the byzant was in use without debasement for 800 years is my recollection from school daze. it was gold.
I think you’re confusing the “market value” of gold with its “barter value”.
In a collapse, the market value will be meaningless. The barter value could be limitless.
That would depend entirely if the chaos is temporary or permanent. We’ll get past a pandemic, I don’t know there is getting past a giant volcanic eruption or massive solar flare that knocks out electricity. At least for a generation or two.
Plenty of post apocalyptic movies: Waterworld, Escape from New York, MadMax and never once has gold been featured as a solution to anything that I’m aware of. People barter for food, sex, water, clothing, and weapons with those things.
Yes, the value of gold depends on a degree of order somewhere. It won’t help you if the police steal it, or if you leave it in its hidey-hole when you have to abandon your house. There isn’t much that old people can do to help themselves. If you are younger, it is probably best to develop your practical skills, in techniques that are likely to be in short supply. And I would hope for martial law rather than disorder. It wouldn’t be fun, but it would be better than famine and cannibalism.
I live in what you would probably call a rural area with lots of cattle. Lately, when people talk about learning to grow food for when the apocalypse comes, I suggest that our city should organize raiding parties to go out and steal cattle and butcher them. This would keep at least some people alive while we LEARNED to grow food etc.
But if all that comes to pass, we shall probably be destroyed by the Asians anyway. Every civilized race comes to an end, unless it is a slave race that simply multiplies and spreads, like the Chinese.
And central banks are backing up the truck as The Financial Times reports that China has spent a record sum importing more than 1,000 tonnes of gold this year as the central bank and local investors pour cash into bullion amid rising geopolitical tensions abroad and poor returns on local assets.
“Both the central bank and private investors are diversifying their reserves and savings towards an asset with no counterparty risk, as part of a broader long-term wealth preservation strategy,” said Lisa Liu, managing director at Gold Mountains Asset Management, part of Zijin Mining Group — China’s largest gold miner.
Gold has certain industrial and even medicinal uses. It’s hoarding and value as currency is historic and questionable, but it yet represents a better value than most other forms of currency or wealth. I think it has properties yet unknown. It is an element and perfect conductor of electricity with no magnetism or oxidation.
What do you mean “perfect conductor”? No resistance? Silver is the best element at conducting electricity. And copper is pretty good too…
Can’t say I really understand the concept driving gold, even if I’m happy to get rich on it.
Gold is scarcer than zeroes in a computer.
Gold is not the liability of a counter-party.
Gold price is the inverse of confidence in Central Bank chads.
Gold has solid foundations beyond “the system”.
Financier J.P. Morgan famously stated, “Gold is money. Everything else is credit.” during his testimony before the U.S. Congress Pujo Committee in 1912.
What you said.
My dad bought gold when I was young. His dad did it after he could do it legally starting in the 70s. My Dad was born in the depression and my Grandpa survived it, with his family of five. My grandpa couldn’t buy gold for much of his life bc FDR.
The reason for them to buy it was obvious, based on those experiences and knowing how all governments behave over the entire history of civilized man.
I’ve bought for over 20 years, and I’m glad as hell I paid attention to them.
And that’s great until you ask gold bugs how they plan to actually use it. Okay, you have a gold bar, how’s that buying bread in an emergency? What does it convert to in that case? How do you prevent FDR from making it useless again?
Conceptually, it’s fantastic. Conceptually. As it is right now, it’s a speculative asset people run to when it gets tough out. Nobody today is exchanging bars of gold for their groceries and I am willing to bet my bottom dollar nobody will be doing that any time in my lifetime.
Actually assaying gold for quality would be prohibitive in truly stringent times. Also verifying some sort of smartphone app that supposedly frictionlessly trades it. Also, as seen in recent crypto apartment scenes, keeping one’s fingers attached to one’s body during transactions involving marauding criminals brandishing bolt cutters.
There are more people around than you would think who can judge a piece of gold and tell whether it is real or not. I used to be able to tell pretty well by weighing it in my hand when I was a small-time bullion dealer back in the 1980s. Remember that there is a jeweller’s shop in every town, and jewellers are familiar with gold.
I haven’t seen any discussion of trade coins. A trade coin is a coin that is used and recognized in places where there is very little in the way of government. I have seen a collection of trade coins that were marked with punches. The collector explained that merchants in the islands would hit a coin with a punch if they were in any doubt about it, to get the surface grime off and see the color of the metal underneath. The Maria Theresa thaler was widely used in North Africa as a trade coin, I believe. So was the English sovereign coin. In fact, some people forged false sovereigns that were quite good enough to deceive the ordinary eye, but which could be detected with a set of scales, because they didn’t have the proper amount of gold in them, and would show up light when weighed. (A sovereign coin is too small for the lightness to be detected by my weighing-in-the-hand method.)
This brings me to the fact that some coin collectors know far more about the history of money than university-trained economists do. They don’t talk about it because nobody is interested. The universities exist to teach you the things that the government wants you to know. (At least in Australia they do: I know some of your American universities have their own funds and a degree of independence.)
i’ve already bought houses using gold and silver coins. very easy when dealing with immigrants on selling side, from places like mexico or india or russia………
That may have been true 30+ years ago but I don’t see how that is possible now when every transaction is monitored by some government agency and bookkeeping requires all sorts of deeded records to go along with property for tax purposes.
The boomer world of yesteryear is long gone, crypto is the current game to avoid lots of legal requirements, the fact that the Trump family is knee deep in it should tell you everything you need to know.
you really are naive. only true 30 plus years ago. FFS that’s just so dumb. i’ve done it for many decades including the past decade. jesus, my man, you are an arrogant and ignorant fuck.
Why so triggered? It is challenging for you to accept that the world has moved on or people question your questionable stories?
I asked for a single story from any legitimate news organization and you come up empty. Plenty of news stories about sexual assault, selling kids, Epstein, human trafficking, drug cartels and their torture, CIA torture, etc but not a single damn story of “gold coins saved my ass out of x.”
Why is it so secret? Is there a secret gold code about “we don’t talk about gold fight club” that I don’t know about?
If you like your gold, keep your gold, no one is telling you to do otherwise.
Echoing this. It’s hilarious how angry gold bugs get over being asked to provide a scintilla of real evidence having physical gold would get them squat. I mean if it’s so useful surely there are places in the world today it would be great to have! I just never hear of anyone using gold coins to escape Myanmar for some reason, maybe they’re buying jerk chicken or a house with it?
In Zimbabwe it was being used regularly some time ago..
The smallest gold unit is the grain, back from 5000 years ago when barley credit was the “coin of the realm”. In truth, people never traded much silver (mercenaries and traders), or gold. And gold hoards are subject to theft, as is everything in chaotic times.
It has been used extensively between Iran and other countries in the Middle East because of dollar sanctions; and Arabs, like Indians and Chinese, prize it to supplement mere dollar claims with Uncle Sam.
Gold will persist. Longer than the dollar.
Why would central banks be buying it?
Incidentally, ‘dollar’ is a bastardization of German Thaler or Dutch Daalder, both hark back to St Joachimstal in Bohemia, the only source of silver in Medieval Europe. [Tal means valley]
That’s a tired fallacy. Gold is an asset. Or do you invest in stocks in the hope of exchanging shares for bread?
ha ha ha. so true. i cannot even count the number of meals i’ve paid for using silver coins all over the world. from china towns in usa to jamaican jerk chicken shops in brooklyn…………forget all the mexican joints i frequented in AZ
Exactly. So… how do you plan to swing your assets around when SHTF?
I’d love to hear one simple explanation here, go ahead and silently vote and stomp your feet. How do you trade assets for useful things when shit hits the fan?
two streets main and wall
take care of main food, fuel, other necessities, THEN worry about wall street, pm stocks, etc
You diversify the jurisdiction of your assets, especially those jurisdictions where you already have a long term visa or citizenship, and then get out of dodge.
There is also a time when preserving your own self and family is more important than preserving your assets.
You are probably right, I just don’t know how probably!
You’ll just be foraging or looting for the bread, just like everyone else.
The gold is for your escape.