President Donald Trump has repeatedly vowed to ensure a "gilded age" for the United States. His plans include a review of the country's gold reserves to make sure that the vast amounts of the precious metal are intact.
Aboard the presidential plane "Air Force One" A week ago, Trump told reporters that his administration would audit the US treasury at Fort Knox, Kentucky, to confirm that the gold was still there.
When asked by a reporter where else besides the vault the gold could be, Trump replied: "If the gold is gone, we would be very upset".
The American billionaire Elon Musk, who accompanied him on the flight and headed the newly created Office of Government Efficiency (DOGE), had commented on the topic earlier on his social network "X" (X), stating: "Who confirms that the gold was not stolen from Fort Knox" (…) Maybe it's there, maybe it's not".
Trump specified that it was his close associate Elon Musk who would conduct the audit of the gold reserves.
Against this backdrop, Treasury Secretary Scott Besant said that an audit of Fort Knox is conducted every year and "all the gold is there and accounted for".
According to data from the Treasury Department, the repository contains over 147.3 million troy ounces of gold, or about 4,581 tons.
Gold reserves at Fort Knox reached their highest level in 1941, when they amounted to 649.6 million troy ounces.
According to data from the World Gold Council, US gold reserves total 8,133 tons. This means that about 2 percent of all gold mined in human history is stored at Fort Knox, experts explain.
In addition to Fort Knox, American gold reserves are also held at the Mint in West Point, New York (52 million troy ounces), the Mint in Denver, Colorado (43.8 million troy ounces), the Federal Reserve Board in New York (13.4 million troy ounces), and the United States Mint has a working gold reserve (2.7 million troy ounces), according to data from the Treasury Department published as of January 31 of this year.
According to the World Gold Council, by the end of 2024 The United States has the largest gold reserves in the world, followed by Germany (3,351.5 tons), Italy (2,451.8 tons), France (2,437 tons), Russia (2,335.8 tons at the end of the third quarter) and China (2,279.6 tons).
The gold at Fort Knox is stored at a book value set by the US government of $42.22 per ounce, Forbes notes. However, gold is traded at a much higher price on the open market, having crossed the $2,900 per troy ounce threshold earlier this month.
This brings the value of the gold stored at Fort Knox to $425 billion.
The treasury was officially established in 1936 and has been a symbol of financial security for nearly a century, according to the Associated Press. For decades, however, conspiracy theories have swirled about what's inside.
The fortified vaults have been the subject of public skepticism and shrouded in secrecy for decades. The Fort Knox facility is off limits to visitors, and its doors have only been opened to unauthorized personnel a handful of times.
The Fort Knox military base, where the vault is located, is located about 35 miles south of Louisville and covers 109,000 acres across three counties in Kentucky.
According to the U.S. Mint, only very small amounts have been removed from the facility to test the purity of the gold during regularly scheduled audits. Aside from these samples, no gold has been transferred to or from the vault for many years.
The facility was built in 1936. and it contained 16,000 cubic feet of granite, 4,200 cubic meters of concrete, 750 tons of rebar, and 670 tons of structural steel. The facility is heavily guarded and has only been visited three times in its history.
In 1974, the United States Mint opened the vault to a group of journalists and a congressional delegation to view the gold reserves. The Secretary of the Treasury authorized the visit after persistent rumors that the gold had been removed. Until then, the only person other than authorized personnel with access to the bullion was President Franklin Delano Roosevelt.
The Fort Knox vault has only been opened once before, in 2017, when Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin visited with Kentucky Governor Matt Bevin and members of Congress.
The gold at Fort Knox is audited annually by inspecting the official seals affixed to the vault's compartments.
However, the last comprehensive inspection of the gold in the vault was conducted in 1953.
Current Treasury Secretary Scott Besant has said he would be happy to arrange an inspection for any senator interested in seeing the gold at Fort Knox.