Concerns about President Donald Trump’s economic policies are prompting Germany and Italy to consider repatriating their $245 billion of gold stored at the New York Federal Reserve Bank, the Financial Times reports.

After the U.S., Germany and Italy hold the world’s second- and third-largest national gold reserves, of 3,352 tons and 2,452 tons, respectively. The U.S. itself has 8,134 tons of gold, housed primarily at the U.S. Mint.

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As Trump has continued to harp on Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell to cut interest rates, politicians and investment bankers in Germany and Italy are fueling a public debate over gold.

“We need to address the question if storing the gold abroad has become more secure and stable over the past decade or not,” said Peter Gauweiler, a former conservative member of parliament from Bavaria’s Christian Social Union. Pointing to the wars in Ukraine and the Middle East and general geopolitical unrest in the world, Gauweiler said, “The answer to this is self-evident.”

Michael Jager, president of The Taxpayers Association of Europe, said, “We are very concerned about Trump tampering with the Federal Reserve Bank’s independence.”

Economic commentator Enrico Grazzini wrote in the left-leaning newspaper Il Fatto Quotidiano, “Leaving 43% of Italy’s gold reserves in America under the unreliable Trump administration is very dangerous for the national interest.”

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Precious metal expert Peter Boehringer, a member of parliament for Germany’s conservative Deutschland party, put it more bluntly: “Gold is an asset of last resort for central banks, and hence, it needs to be stored without any third-party risk. It’s not just legal ownership but physical control over the gold that really matters.”

When Western European countries began to see huge trade surpluses with the U.S. in the first two decades after WWII, they accumulated huge gold reserves and sent large portions of the precious metal to New York, one of the world’s most important gold trading hubs. Storing gold in the U.S. was also seen as a hedge should a war with the Soviet Union break out.

However, some Europeans fear exporting gold from the U.S. back home would not sit well with U.S. President Trump.

Bert Flossbach, a German investment veteran and founder of Germany’s largest independent asset manager, Flossbach von Storch, cautioned, “Bringing the gold back now with great fanfare would send a signal that relations with the U.S. are deteriorating.”

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