futuresclock

USD actually strengthened during the time, so it actually makes sense for gold to trade lower.

Physical gold especially those owned by the central banks are more like token of liquidity rather than reserve or currency. And moves like these are usually more political than economic. In reality it makes very little sense to move the gold out of the US, given there is no significant arbitrage between gold prices in the US or the Europe.

On the contrary, back in 2023, there used to be huge arbitrage window between comex/LBMA gold and SHFE/SGE gold, basically New York and London gold vs Shanghai gold. So tons of gold were actually imported to China vaults by banks who trying to capture the arb profit. In short moves backed the arb are usually real, and genuine. Moves not backed by the physical arb, are usually more like a political signal or part of the diplomatic play.