[4] The Act fixed the value of one dollar at 25.8 grains of 90% pure gold, equivalent to about $20.67 per troy ounce, very near its historic value.

After the realigning 1932 United States elections following the onset of the Great Depression, the gold standard was abandoned from March 1933, and the Act abrogated, by a coordinated series of policy changes including executive orders by President Franklin D. Roosevelt,[5] new laws,[6] and U.S. Supreme Court rulings known as the Gold Clause Cases narrowly upheld the Roosevelt administration's policies.

After World War II international agreements comprising the Bretton Woods system formally restored foreign central banks' ability to exchange United States dollars for gold at a fixed price.

World trade growth increasingly stressed this system, which was abandoned in the Nixon shock of 1971.

[7] Attempts to reform the Bretton Woods system quickly proved unworkable and failed.