It emerged this week that the Dutch government has moved a large chunk of its gold reserves from the United States to the Bank of England. Some 86 tons were shipped out of North America between March and August. Central bankers are generally dull in their language, and the Dutch are no exception.
“Combining the processes of buying and selling and physical transport has allowed us to spread the risks associated with such a complex physical gold relocation,” they announced.
Recommended Stories
Risks? What risks? Behind that dry statement is an implied fear that a future U.S. government might help itself to the gold. Think about that for a moment. Yes, countries do sometimes seize other countries’ assets. Several Western states, including the U.S., have confiscated Russian government property, earmarking it for a fund to rebuild Ukraine. But we generally reserve such treatment for our declared enemies. The only example I can think of where a country has stolen a friend’s gold was when Spain’s Republican government was foolish enough to trust the Soviet Union with its reserves in 1936. “They’ll no more see that gold again than their own ears,” Josef Stalin declared, roaring with laughter.
Where could the Dutch have gotten the idea that President Donald Trump might treat them as Stalin treated his notional Spanish allies? Well, they watched him threaten Denmark over Greenland. They saw him impose vicious trade sanctions against Canada in response to its polite refusal to become a state. They have perhaps noted that he never insults Russian President Vladimir Putin in the way that he habitually insults Norwegians, South Koreans, and other allies.
Most immediately, they have seen him propping up the Venezuelan dictatorship in return for what he claims on Truth Social is ownership of “more than 65 BILLION BARRELS of proven Oil Reserves in Venezuela … a Gift from Venezuela to the People of the United States.”
When U.S. forces ousted Nicolas Maduro, Venezuela’s dim and nasty dictator, in January, I cheered. I had predicted the intervention months earlier, and believed, as Venezuelan opposition figures did, that an orderly transition to democracy would follow. I was expecting the general election to be held around now, or at the very least to have been scheduled. I was wrong.
While the details of the deal behind Trump’s announcement remain murky, the essence of the plan is that the U.S. will get a 35% equity stake in North American Blue Energy Partners, a private company owned by a Venezuelan whom previous U.S. administrations regarded as too shady to touch, as well as the rights to at least 20% of its output for 100 years.
For what it is worth, the deal will almost certainly not unfold in the way that Trump has announced. For one thing, getting to that oil after years of neglect and disinvestment will not be easy. It is not just the physical infrastructure and the pipelines that have decayed. It is that all the best people in the industry, and indeed almost all the mediocre people, have emigrated. Some are working in the oil fields of Texas or Alberta, and some are driving Ubers in Florida. They will not return until they see a stable democratic government.
In any case, the deal is unconstitutional under Venezuelan law, which defines oil deposits as “the property of the Republic” and lays down that they are “therefore inalienable and not transferable.” Public figures from across the spectrum in Venezuela have come out against the deal, and there is a palpable sense of betrayal among the democratic opposition, which took 67% of the vote in the stolen election of 2024 — we know the number because they kept tallies at local polling stations, anticipating that the central count would be rigged.
CANADA WILL WIN THIS TRADE WAR
Venezuela’s democrats and dissidents suspect that the deal has been brokered by the acting president, Delcy Rodriguez, to prolong her tenure. Rodriguez is a career Chavista who went into politics to avenge her father, a Marxist agitator who died in custody after kidnapping American businessman. She has been sanctioned by the U.S., Canada, and the European Union for presiding over human rights violations. Trump calls her a “terrific person.”
Which brings us back to the Dutch Central Bank. The free world has assumed, since 1941, that the U.S. would ultimately side with the good guys. Yet, in Venezuela, as in Ukraine, its attitude is predatory, mercenary, shameless. For the first time in my life, American policy actually resembles the caricature drawn by Latin American leftists. Yes, it is the policy of one man, but it has been enabled by the entire system. Some things are hard to unsee.
