A lot of recent news — like the Federal Reserve’s decision to hold interest rates steady and the announcement of tariffs by President Donald Trump — has implications for financial markets, including the market for gold. 

The price of gold has been on the rise since early January and hit a new high last week before falling back slightly on Friday. Meanwhile, there’s been a surge in the shipping of gold from the United Kingdom to the United States. 

London and New York are hubs of the global gold trade. Jacob Kirkegaard at the Peterson Institute for International Economics said New York has the futures market, while “most of the physical gold is still stored with the Bank of England.”

The Financial Times reported that so much gold has been shipped to New York recently, there’s a shortage in London. Kirkegaard explained that this happened because U.S. tariffs on imported metals could be coming soon.

If you’re a company that wants to hold gold as a safe haven or needs it for industrial uses, “you have an incentive to move it inside the United States, rather than a vault in London,” said Kirkegaard.

This geographic shift doesn’t explain why the price of gold is up. High U.S. interest rates and a strong dollar usually depress gold, said Rob Haworth at U.S. Bank. But:

“Think about tariffs and sanctions and other restrictions on global trade,” said Haworth. “We could continue to see global central banks diversify their reserve holdings into gold.”

This could push the price of gold even higher.