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The One Gold Rule That Moves $500 Billion a Year
Description
Episode 78 of Global Trade with Fexingo unpacks the single most powerful rule in international finance: the gold clause in commercial contracts. Lucas and Luna trace how a 19th-century clause specifying payment in gold coins survived the end of the gold standard, was outlawed by President Roosevelt in 1933, and made a quiet comeback in modern trade finance. They walk through a real 2023 case where a Swiss commodities trader demanded gold-linked settlement for a copper shipment to China, and explain why gold clauses now underpin an estimated $500 billion in annual trade flows. The episode also covers the legal grey zone created by the 1976 Jamaica Accords, which let private parties choose gold as a reference currency even as governments abandoned it. No hot takes, just the concrete legal and financial mechanics of a hidden rule that shapes global commerce every day.