06/23/2022 | News release | Distributed by Public on 06/23/2022 07:03
The U.S. current-account deficit, which reflects the combined balances on trade in goods and services and income flows between U.S. residents and residents of other countries, widened by $66.6 billion, or 29.6 percent, to $291.4 billion in the first quarter of 2022. The widening mostly reflected an increased deficit on goods. The first-quarter deficit was 4.8 percent of current-dollar gross domestic product, up from 3.7 percent in the fourth quarter.
All major categories of current-account transactions increased in the first quarter of 2022, the seventh consecutive quarter of broad-based growth following notable COVID-19-related declines in the second quarter of 2020. The full economic effects of the COVID-19 pandemic cannot be quantified in the statistics, because the impacts are generally embedded in source data and cannot be separately identified. For more information, see "U.S. International Transactions, First Quarter 2022 and Annual Update."