For over 50 years, Americans have grown accustomed to the sound of cash-printing machines, generating dollars as if our economy were a Monopoly board. Yet, amid the flood of money, a critical question remains unanswered: What about gold? It’s one of the most important and historically trusted assets in the world, and yet it’s often overlooked in the conversation about our financial future.

Last week, I sent a letter to President Trump urging him to conduct a full audit of our nation’s gold reserves, which have been stored at Fort Knox for nearly 90 years. Given the widespread distrust Americans now have for their government, confirming what’s inside Fort Knox could begin restoring much-needed faith in our monetary system.

Revaluing America’s gold reserves to match the current market price could change everything.

History underscores the importance of auditing our gold reserves. From the late 1800s until the start of World War II, the U.S. dollar operated under the gold standard, meaning its value was directly tied to a fixed quantity of gold held by the government.

In 1944, as the Allies moved toward victory in World War II, the United Nations convened the Bretton Woods Conference in New Hampshire to establish a new global financial system. The conference transformed U.S. monetary policy by making the dollar the world’s reserve currency, allowing countries to exchange dollars for gold at a fixed rate of $35 an ounce. Soon after, under the Marshall Plan, the U.S. shipped vast amounts of gold to Europe to aid its recovery, cementing the dollar’s role as the dominant global currency.

By the 1960s, cracks in the system began to show. The Vietnam War and Lyndon Johnson’s “Great Society” programs drained government coffers, leading to massive spending and excessive dollar printing. The U.S. could no longer maintain the Bretton Woods dollar-to-gold ratio and faced the risk of depleting its gold reserves.

To prevent this, President Richard Nixon took the drastic step in 1971 of severing the dollar’s tie to gold. This officially ended the gold standard, leaving U.S. currency backed by nothing tangible.

This shift created an increasingly unstable financial landscape. Despite that, gold remains a crucial asset in the global financial system — serving as a “fail safe” hedge against inflation and a reliable store of value. Yet for decades, while countries, particularly in Asia, have been amassing gold, the United States has provided little transparency about the status of its own gold reserves.

Why gold matters in 2025

Major shifts are making waves in the global gold market, and the U.S. needs to be part of that conversation.

Countries around the world are buying gold in record amounts — could it be that the United States is doing the same, perhaps in preparation for a major revaluation of gold to stabilize our currency? Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent recently spoke about “monetizing” the U.S. balance sheet for the American people. Could this include revaluing our gold reserves to better reflect market prices?

The U.S. Treasury’s gold stockpile is currently priced at just $42 an ounce, a value set by law back in 1973. In the real world, gold is worth nearly $3,000 an ounce. What if we revalued America’s gold reserves to match the current market price? That could change everything — maybe even provide a stabilizing force for the dollar, fight inflation, and stop the endless money printing.

Do we really own our gold supply?

But one major roadblock poses a severe risk to gold’s promise: rehypothecation.

Rehypothecation is like borrowing $10,000 from a friend and giving him your motorcycle as collateral and then he uses that same motorcycle to secure his own loan — the practice of using the same asset multiple times as collateral for different debts.

If America’s gold has been used to back multiple loans or obligations, our actual access to gold as a liquid asset might not be as great as we think. That’s why we need a full audit of Fort Knox. The complex hasn’t been fully audited since 1953, and we have no way of knowing how much gold we actually own and how much has been rehypothecated in the global market.

Restoring confidence in our financial system begins with opening the vault and showing the American people what we really have. Moreover, taking stock of our usable gold supply paints an actual picture of the country’s total assets, which is critical if the United States will maintain her role as the leader on the global financial stage — a position that is not guaranteed and can, if it hasn’t already, slip into other hands under our negligence.

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