# Gold Surging Past $5,000 in 2026: De-Dollarization & Risks of War

An episode of [Global Trade Deciphered](https://invisiblenetwork.ai/podcast/1783566127), 17 Feb 2026, 21 min.

Audio: https://www.buzzsprout.com/2422711/episodes/18693700-gold-surging-past-5-000-in-2026-de-dollarization-risks-of-war.mp3

Send us Fan Mail Gold has surged past $5,000 per ounce in 2026, hitting highs above $5,600 in January. What is driving this dramatic rally—and what does it signal for global trade and financial global order? Justin Hayden Miller breaks down the key forces behind gold's explosive move, including surging safe-haven demand, central bank purchases, and growing discussions around de-dollarization. The episode examines renewed calls in Germany, Poland, and Italy to repatriate gold reserves from US vaults—prompted by geopolitical strains in transatlantic relations under the second Trump administration and concerns over asset risks. Drawing on historical patterns of gold accumulation and movements ahead of major conflicts, the discussion explores whether these developments indicate eroding trust in the dollar as the dominant reserve currency and potential fractures in global alliances. Key subjects covered: • Germany's push to bring home gold held in the US • Broader European repatriation debates and trust issues • Historical precedents of gold hoarding before military conflicts • The paradox of gold's heightened role in today's free-floating market versus the classical gold standard era • BRICS nations' hedging against sanctions/trade pressures • Implications for dollar dominance, global trade finance, supply chains, and multipolar alliances. Essential listening for business leaders, policymakers, investors, and analysts monitoring geopolitics, reserve currencies, and international trade dynamics. Keywords : gold price 2026, $XAUUSD, gold $5000, de-dollarization, gold repatriation Germany, dollar reserve currency, geopolitics gold, central bank gold, US Europe relations Trump, global trade risks, gold surge 2026. Micro-clip of Marco Rubio leaving for Munich Security Summit: C-Span If you like the podcast, please subscribe so you don't miss any episodes and leave a rating. Also tell friends and colleagues about it so the podcast can grow. *Follow Justin on X: @JustinHaydenM or contact us by email at GlobalTradeDeciphered@gmail.com Sign up to our newsletter. (We won't spam you and will remove your email on your request.) https://substack.com/@globaltradedeciphered *Disclaimer: This podcast is simply for informational and entertainment purposes only and does not in way constitute legal, business, financial or other advice whatsoever. Should you require advice then please seek such from an appropriately qualified professional, explaining your specific circumstances.

## Chapters

- 0:00 Intro: Gold's $5,000+ surge and core questions
- 1:50 Repatriation calls for German gold from US vaults
- 5:54 Gold and historical military conflicts
- 8:23 Gold's evolving role post-gold standard
- 11:23 Gold and the Dollar $
- 14:18 Global Trade link to Gold and the Dollar $
- 16:31 EU / US mutual strategy and Gold / Closing Remarks

## Transcript

[0:00] Justin Hayden Miller: In this episode, I want to talk about gold and its skyrocketing price.
[0:06] Justin Hayden Miller: Will it topple the dollar from being the world's premium reserve currency?
[0:11] Justin Hayden Miller: And could it even indicate impending major war?
[0:16] Justin Hayden Miller: Stay around to find out.
[0:18] Justin Hayden Miller: I'm Justin Hayden Miller.
[0:22] Justin Hayden Miller: Welcome to Global Trade Deciphered.
[0:25] Justin Hayden Miller: Deciphering the policies, trends, and geopolitics reshaping global trade.
[0:33] Justin Hayden Miller: Germany holds the world's second largest official gold reserve, totaling nearly three and a half thousand tons of the stuff.
[0:47] Justin Hayden Miller: And nearly forty percent of it, of those huge reserves, are physically held in the US.
[0:54] Justin Hayden Miller: But since February 2026, several prominent German economists and politicians are actively urging Germany to repatriate its gold reserves from the US back to Germany to bring its gold back home.
[1:11] Justin Hayden Miller: Why?
[1:12] Justin Hayden Miller: Well, as with nearly everything nowadays, it's because of geopolitics.
[1:19] Justin Hayden Miller: What else?
[1:20] Justin Hayden Miller: Because of risks and strains because of US EU relations under the second Trump administration, particularly because of the US, is being said to become ever increasingly unpredictable.
[1:36] Justin Hayden Miller: Like rumors flying around that the US might invade a NATO country.
[1:42] Justin Hayden Miller: The level of blind trust that Europe had in the US is not so quite as strong as it was.
[1:50] Justin Hayden Miller: In January 2026, in an interview with the German financial newspaper Handelsblatt, Immanuel Munch, co-director of the Center for Central Banking at the Frankfurt School of Finance, said, Given the current geopolitical situation, it seems risky to store so much gold in the US.
[2:15] Justin Hayden Miller: In the interest of greater strategic independence from the US, the Bundesbank would therefore be well advised to consider repatriating the gold.
[2:29] Justin Hayden Miller: Poland is pulling back as well from stocking gold in the US and even in the UK.
[2:34] Justin Hayden Miller: And in an interview he gave in February 2026, Michael Jagger, head of the European Taxpayers' Association, said, We are of the opinion that it is high time to bring the German gold back from the USA.
[2:52] Justin Hayden Miller: You see, Jagger's highlighted that trust in the US has been badly damaged by Trump's policies, including potential pressure on the Fed amongst amid high US debt interest payments.
[3:05] Justin Hayden Miller: And he described the risk as high that the whole US debt crisis could go purr-shaped.
[3:12] Justin Hayden Miller: You know, even Elon Musk has been shouting this out for the past year or so.
[3:16] Justin Hayden Miller: I believe that's the reason why he left the US administration.
[3:21] Justin Hayden Miller: The big, beautiful bill.
[3:23] Justin Hayden Miller: But actors in Italy are also mirroring Germany's position with politicians pushing for bringing their gold back from the US because of similar concerns.
[3:33] Justin Hayden Miller: Yeah, you know, it it's feared that the US could pull another Maddy.
[3:38] Justin Hayden Miller: Gold could become a bargaining chip in international disputes, or be the subject of retaliatory measures during trade disagreements, as it's the case already with tariffs.
[3:50] Justin Hayden Miller: Yeah, the US has already leveraged tariffs to I wouldn't say a max, but you know, quite high on the scale.
[3:58] Justin Hayden Miller: And they're thinking, well, why not the unthinkable with gold?
[4:02] Justin Hayden Miller: They're thinking that it might not be Zelensky in the Oval Office with President Trump saying you don't have the cards.
[4:10] Justin Hayden Miller: They fear that it may even be the German Chancellor in the Oval Office, with the US President telling him you don't have the gold.
[4:19] Justin Hayden Miller: It's here at Fort Knox.
[4:23] Justin Hayden Miller: And with massive increases in the value of gold at present, this just increases the importance of the matter and is seen as multiplying the risk.
[4:36] Justin Hayden Miller: All this is not good news.
[4:40] Justin Hayden Miller: Global trade and the financial systems that it feeds off are based on trust.
[4:46] Justin Hayden Miller: And what's happening with gold is a signal that trust between nations is withering.
[4:54] Justin Hayden Miller: So I was thinking that it is like the US and Europe having lived apart some time, but have shared the same bed for years.
[5:08] Justin Hayden Miller: But after a spiff between the two just after New Year, it seemed that the US might go round to her place and appropriate the green patio as its own, digging bits up of it and building on it.
[5:23] Justin Hayden Miller: And the neighbors and common friends have said this is completely out of order.
[5:29] Justin Hayden Miller: And eventually he backed down, saying he never really planned to do it in the first place.
[5:35] Justin Hayden Miller: She nevertheless wants her gold jewelry back that she left in his safe at his place.
[5:41] Justin Hayden Miller: Just in case.
[5:43] Justin Hayden Miller: But seriously, when countries start moving large amounts of physical gold around the place, or like Germany beginning to start talking of plans to do so and to bring it back, even if it's not the official position of the German government, history has shown us on multiple occasions that it's often a warning sign that a major war may well be on the cards.
[6:14] Justin Hayden Miller: And history gives us lots of examples.
[6:17] Justin Hayden Miller: Pre-World War I.
[6:18] Justin Hayden Miller: The gold accumulation started in 1906 and continued to 1914.
[6:25] Justin Hayden Miller: France and Germany built up huge gold reserves.
[6:30] Justin Hayden Miller: France nearly doubled its holdings, and Germany almost doubled theirs.
[6:34] Justin Hayden Miller: They saw gold as essential for funding war efforts and an arms race.
[6:40] Justin Hayden Miller: Then you've got pre-World War II with accumulation of gold in the 30s, amidst rising threats from fascism in Europe.
[6:49] Justin Hayden Miller: I mean, the US even built Fort Knox for the purpose in the period.
[6:57] Justin Hayden Miller: I think it was completed in 1936.
[7:00] Justin Hayden Miller: And by the end of the 30s, the US had over 14,000 tons of it.
[7:08] Justin Hayden Miller: Poland's gold reserve was moved in the late 1930s because of concerns of war.
[7:14] Justin Hayden Miller: When the Nazis went into Austria, the first thing they did was to grab the gold reserves.
[7:21] Justin Hayden Miller: Now you're saying, well, Justin, this is the 20th century, fair enough, but it's not in every century that there, you know, the two world wars.
[7:31] Justin Hayden Miller: So you want me to go further back?
[7:34] Justin Hayden Miller: Okay.
[7:34] Justin Hayden Miller: France built large gold reserves under Napoleon III, just prior to the Franco-Prussi War.
[7:42] Justin Hayden Miller: I'll I'll go back further.
[7:44] Justin Hayden Miller: Prior to the Napoleonic Wars, Britain accumulated and protected gold reserves fearing revolutionary France.
[7:52] Justin Hayden Miller: The list goes on and on and on.
[7:56] Justin Hayden Miller: Hoarding gold premises major wars.
[8:00] Justin Hayden Miller: Now, don't get me wrong, I'm not saying there'll definitively be one.
[8:05] Justin Hayden Miller: I'm not saying that World War III is just about to break out.
[8:09] Justin Hayden Miller: What I am saying is that it's a warning.
[8:12] Justin Hayden Miller: A canary in the coal mine.
[8:15] Justin Hayden Miller: Yeah, I'm saying wake up.
[8:18] Justin Hayden Miller: Prick your damned ears up.
[8:20] Justin Hayden Miller: Everyone needs to calm down.
[8:23] Justin Hayden Miller: Now, gold's price has exploded recently, as you you all know.
[8:28] Justin Hayden Miller: I got the figures out just before recording this.
[8:30] Justin Hayden Miller: It closed around $1,900 an ounce in 2020.
[8:36] Justin Hayden Miller: It dipped slightly in 2021 to 22, to around 1,800, and then it climbed and climbed and climbed and is climbing to 2,000, well over just over $2,000 in 2023, a whopping $4,300 odd announced by the end of 2025.
[8:57] Justin Hayden Miller: That's 65% up on the year.
[9:00] Justin Hayden Miller: In January 2026, it hit it went over 5,500.
[9:06] Justin Hayden Miller: That's a 73% jump from early 2025.
[9:10] Justin Hayden Miller: It went down 3% a couple of days ago, last week.
[9:14] Justin Hayden Miller: I said potentially because of mixed US economic signals, but it's it's volatile.
[9:19] Justin Hayden Miller: But even though it's volatile, the trend is up.
[9:22] Justin Hayden Miller: Now, I've realized that many of the issues that I discuss in this podcast involve a paradox.
[9:28] Justin Hayden Miller: I haven't always mentioned it.
[9:28] Justin Hayden Miller: When I'm thinking about doing an episode, I tend to jot a few ideas down.
[9:33] Justin Hayden Miller: I've meant to mention some of these, and but I'm gonna I'm not gonna forget this time.
[9:37] Justin Hayden Miller: I I see a lot of paradoxes in some of the elements that we talk about.
[9:43] Justin Hayden Miller: And they're not any old, just any old paradoxes, but massive ones.
[9:48] Justin Hayden Miller: And therefore, I'm going to introduce a new feature in my episodes called the paradox bomb.
[9:55] Justin Hayden Miller: And lo and behold, we have one coming up.
[9:58] Justin Hayden Miller: Because certainly, under the classical gold standard, gold was central to the monetary system.
[10:05] Justin Hayden Miller: Everything was pegged to gold, including currencies.
[10:08] Justin Hayden Miller: Boiled down to a type of price fixing, quite honestly, fixing the value of a currency based on the amount of gold held by the country printing the money.
[10:18] Justin Hayden Miller: And because the gold standard no longer generally applies, we might think that as a consequence, gold's less significant.
[10:27] Justin Hayden Miller: You know, the price might be very high at the moment, but we might think it was a lot more important at the beginning of the 20th century the the height of the gold standard.
[10:36] Justin Hayden Miller: But wait for the paradox bomb.
[10:39] Justin Hayden Miller: Gold was surely very important during the gold standard, but it has an equal or even higher importance now.
[10:49] Justin Hayden Miller: Boom.
[10:50] Justin Hayden Miller: Because during the gold standard, gold was pegged to currencies.
[10:56] Justin Hayden Miller: It was generally in the interests of central banks to defend those fixed parities, the fixed price.
[11:03] Justin Hayden Miller: And you know, in the US, whatever, that that's why its price was fixed at $35 an ounce.
[11:09] Justin Hayden Miller: Gold is a free agent now.
[11:11] Justin Hayden Miller: Its lid has been taken off.
[11:13] Justin Hayden Miller: It's a bit like a a Pandora's box and we we've opened the lid.
[11:18] Justin Hayden Miller: And you know, in its free, largely unregulated market today where demand is increasing, increasing, and the the price is just going through the ceiling.
[11:28] Justin Hayden Miller: Seventh heaven.
[11:30] Justin Hayden Miller: To seismic levels, because it's a safe haven, what's perceived to be a safe haven.
[11:35] Justin Hayden Miller: It's also a hedge against inflation.
[11:38] Justin Hayden Miller: People, countries, and everyone buy it to secure value in inflationary times.
[11:44] Justin Hayden Miller: And this is seen by some as a preparation for countermeasures against the dollar's dominance as the world's safe currency, backing a gold-backed trade system to counter US dominance.
[11:58] Justin Hayden Miller: Even a couple of years ago, I thought this was just a little bit exaggerated.
[12:03] Justin Hayden Miller: Certainly the dollar's lost power and value, but to my mind, it has and remains the safest of the currencies.
[12:10] Justin Hayden Miller: It has lost an element, but nevertheless other currencies, proportionally, have lost even more, and therefore the dollar remains on top.
[12:20] Justin Hayden Miller: And certainly I've considered that the dollar would maintain that position.
[12:24] Justin Hayden Miller: The situation though is that if the US is breaking ties with its traditional alliances, then this could change potentially the equation, or that's my fear.
[12:35] Justin Hayden Miller: It depends on how you calculate it, but the EU and the UK economies combined represent some 25% plus of the world economy.
[12:44] Justin Hayden Miller: Very sizable proportion.
[12:47] Justin Hayden Miller: The US cannot disregard how an economy so important, whether it has structural issues or not, regards the US.
[12:55] Justin Hayden Miller: The economies, Europe and the United States, are so intertwined, there's a mutual dependence.
[13:01] Justin Hayden Miller: If gold signals problems a sign of pressure on the dollar's predominance, then it would be because the US dollar's dominance relies on trust.
[13:14] Justin Hayden Miller: It's the go-to for global reserve because it's seen as safe and neutral, dependable, much like the US has been seen.
[13:25] Justin Hayden Miller: They go hand in hand.
[13:26] Justin Hayden Miller: If that trust is diminished, if we're now in a world where assets held in other countries and other jurisdictions can be frozen or used against the title holder, the owner, if if not confiscated because of geopolitical tensions, disputes, trade issues, you name it, then that erodes trust or completely kills it.
[13:51] Justin Hayden Miller: We've seen Russian assets frozen after the Russia-Ukraine conflict.
[13:55] Justin Hayden Miller: $300 billion?
[13:57] Justin Hayden Miller: Nobody wants to find themselves in the same situation.
[14:00] Justin Hayden Miller: Don't see it as paranoia, right?
[14:02] Justin Hayden Miller: Paranoia is an unjustified fear of something, and they feel, believe, that recent events entirely justify their fears and calls, and therefore the call by some to repatriate those assets, whatever they are, investments, cash, and gold.
[14:19] Justin Hayden Miller: Gold steps in as the perfect alternative to a reserve currency.
[14:24] Justin Hayden Miller: It can't be frozen in exactly the same way as cash, stocks or bonds can be, you know, unless you seize it, unless you nick it, which is the fear.
[14:33] Justin Hayden Miller: Add on to that that certain countries have an inherent political motive to secure dedollarization.
[14:40] Justin Hayden Miller: They didn't manage to do it.
[14:43] Justin Hayden Miller: So they're jumping on the gold bandwagon.
[14:46] Justin Hayden Miller: The BRICS nations, the emerging economies consisting of China, India, Russia, are apparently accumulating physical gold as a hedge against US sanctions and trade wars.
[14:57] Justin Hayden Miller: What's all this got to do with global trade?
[15:00] Justin Hayden Miller: Everything.
[15:01] Justin Hayden Miller: Everything.
[15:03] Justin Hayden Miller: Global trade has two fundamentals trust in the finance system to be paid for goods that are exported and supplied.
[15:14] Justin Hayden Miller: Two, the currency in which these goods are traded.
[15:18] Justin Hayden Miller: You want to be paid in a trusted currency to ensure that you're paid the value of the sale price.
[15:24] Justin Hayden Miller: So you can see that all these issues interplay and are interdependent.
[15:30] Justin Hayden Miller: Geopolitics, gold prices, de-dollarization, global trade, countries organizing the repatriation of their gold is very, very, very similar to almost you know, pulling all your money out of a bank.
[15:46] Justin Hayden Miller: If too many countries are doing this, I see the parallel to a run-on-the-bank situation.
[15:52] Justin Hayden Miller: Banks operate on trust.
[15:54] Justin Hayden Miller: When people take all their money out of a bank, they've lost trust in the bank.
[15:58] Justin Hayden Miller: And I think that there could be similarities with gold in the present set of circumstances.
[16:03] Justin Hayden Miller: And we need to stay calm and we need to keep our heads on and we need to maintain trust between economies and between nations and certainly between allies.
[16:14] Justin Hayden Miller: The case where Europe and the US lose trust in each other, that is where I see a potential tipping point.
[16:22] Justin Hayden Miller: And even a tipping point on the dollar.
[16:25] Justin Hayden Miller: So I'm a lot more optimistic that the dollar will maintain its dominance.
[16:30] Justin Hayden Miller: I mean it has for the past sixty years.
[16:32] Justin Hayden Miller: It's avoidable that the dollar loses predominance.
[16:36] Justin Hayden Miller: And my view is that that has been thankful to close allied relations, among other reasons, and that cooperation between the US and Europe, the UK included, is not just a question of mutual interest, but you know, continued mutual dominance.
[16:52] Justin Hayden Miller: I don't like, you know, extending analogies uh too far.
[16:56] Justin Hayden Miller: It gets boring, can sound a little bit corny, but some couples stay married because it's just too costly to divorce.
[17:03] Justin Hayden Miller: And I believe that's the case for Europe and the United States.
[17:07] Justin Hayden Miller: Mum and dad have to set aside their differences and get on with each other for the children.
[17:13] Justin Hayden Miller: Because if the situation continues as it's started, and there are consequences for dedollarization, then this is gonna have big, you know, important consequences.
[17:22] Justin Hayden Miller: It's a global trade podcast, so we might as well talk about global trade.
[17:25] Justin Hayden Miller: It's gonna it's gonna affect supply chains, it's gonna create regional fragmentation as I see it.
[17:30] Justin Hayden Miller: I see it raising costs of logistics and greater costs and greater risks generally of trade.
[17:38] Justin Hayden Miller: It will also push countries to create trade hubs.
[17:41] Justin Hayden Miller: That's precisely what I was talking about in my last episode concerning Kearney.
[17:46] Justin Hayden Miller: That's that's what how Kearney sees it.
[17:48] Justin Hayden Miller: He sees uh as I mentioned, uh Kearney, in my opinion, sees you know the world becoming a multipolar mesh of overlapping alliances, uh, according to specific objectives on specific issues, a federalization of alliances, as I said.
[18:06] Justin Hayden Miller: The US Department of State released a document only last week publishing remarks that Marco Rubio said to the press that the the US Secretary of State. He said:
[18:17] Marco Rubio: I think it's in a defining moment, and I'm referring back to even the speech on the statement I begin during my nomination during the second period saying the world is changing the link.
[18:28] Marco Rubio: The world of the world is the man who might be the world of the live in a new member in the ship of multiple.
[18:34] Marco Rubio: And it's been a little more than the most likely one of the conversations and many of our minds, and um we need to continue to have those conversations.
[18:51] Justin Hayden Miller: Sounds very similar to what Mark Carney was saying only last month.
[18:54] Justin Hayden Miller: The old order's gone.
[18:56] Justin Hayden Miller: Get used to it.
[18:58] Justin Hayden Miller: You know, we're living in a new world.
[19:00] Justin Hayden Miller: We all need to decide what our new role is.
[19:03] Justin Hayden Miller: Have you ever seen the the classic James Bond movie, Goldfinger?
[19:08] Justin Hayden Miller: Yeah.
[19:08] Justin Hayden Miller: Ulrich Goldfinger uh devised Operation Grand Slam.
[19:13] Justin Hayden Miller: He planned to irradiate the US bullion depository at Fort Knox with a dirty bomb.
[19:21] Justin Hayden Miller: That way, by eradicating all US gold, it was going to skyrocket the price of gold, so his own gold shot through the roof.
[19:29] Justin Hayden Miller: To cement Goldfinger's dominance of on gold in the global gold market.
[19:35] Justin Hayden Miller: If you think about it, Goldfinger's objective was one to cripple the US economy and international monetary stability.
[19:45] Justin Hayden Miller: Two cause global financial chaos.
[19:48] Justin Hayden Miller: And three to massively inflate the market price of gold, making him the richest man in the history of the world.
[19:56] Justin Hayden Miller: You know, like Elon Musk levels.
[19:58] Justin Hayden Miller: But the objective of the BRICS?
[20:01] Justin Hayden Miller: To diminish US global dominance.
[20:04] Justin Hayden Miller: There's a really iconic moment in the film where Shirley Eaton, she's murdered, found naked on a bed, entirely painted in gold.
[20:15] Justin Hayden Miller: James Bond explained that the cause of death was skin suffocation.
[20:21] Justin Hayden Miller: I'm not- I'm not sure it could actually kill anyone.
[20:24] Justin Hayden Miller: I think they got that wrong in the in the movie.
[20:27] Justin Hayden Miller: Gold's not inherently poisonous.
[20:31] Justin Hayden Miller: Pure gold is one of the least toxic metals known.
[20:35] Justin Hayden Miller: Until it comes to geopolitics.
[20:40] Justin Hayden Miller: Thanks for having listened to the podcast.
[20:47] Justin Hayden Miller: The content of this podcast is intended only to provide an information resource of interest and does not constitute legal, tax, business, or financial advice of any kind.
[20:55] Justin Hayden Miller: Should you require advice, then you should engage an appropriately qualified person to provide you specific advisory services in the field.
[21:00] Justin Hayden Miller: The views, thoughts, and opinions expressed in this podcast are my own, and do not necessarily represent the views, thoughts, or opinions of any law firm, nor that of any third party, other person, company, or organization.
[21:09] Justin Hayden Miller: Stay tuned for the next episode.

Shows are listed from Apple Podcasts' charts and directory, and Podcast Index where it is used. Every show and episode belongs to its publisher and plays from the publisher's own feed; this site hosts none of them.