Resources
- Stay informed about BEA developments by reading The BEA Wire, signing up for BEA’s email subscription service, or following @BEA_News on X.
- Historical time series for these estimates can be accessed in BEA's Interactive Data Application.
- Access BEA data by registering for BEA's Data Application Programming Interface.
- For more on BEA statistics, see our online journal, the Survey of Current Business.
- For upcoming economic indicators, see BEA's news release schedule.
- More information on the International Transactions Accounts (ITAs) and a description of the estimation methods used to compile them are provided in U.S. International Economic Accounts: Concepts and Methods.
Definitions
The current account consists of transactions between U.S. residents and nonresidents in goods, services, primary income, and secondary income.
Goods are physical items with ownership rights that can be exchanged among institutional units through transactions. Nonmonetary gold, a component of goods, includes all gold other than monetary gold and can be in the form of bullion, gold powder, gold bars, noncommemorative gold coins, and gold in other varied stages of manufacture. Monetary gold, a component of financial assets, is gold owned by monetary authorities and is held as a reserve asset.
Services transactions consist of transactions arising from productive activities that change the condition of the consumer or that facilitate the exchange of products and financial assets.
Primary income transactions include investment income and compensation of employees. Investment income is the return on holdings of financial assets and includes direct investment income, portfolio investment income, other investment income, and income on reserve assets. Compensation of employees is income for the contribution of labor inputs to the production process.
Secondary income consists of current transfers between residents and nonresidents. Unlike an exchange, a transfer is a transaction in which a good, service, or asset is provided without a corresponding return of economic value. Secondary income receipts and payments include U.S. government and private transfers, such as international cooperation (primarily U.S. government grants), U.S. government pensions, fines and penalties, withholding taxes, personal transfers (remittances), insurance-related transfers, and other current transfers.
The capital account consists of capital transfers between residents and nonresidents and the cross-border acquisition and disposal of nonproduced nonfinancial assets. Capital transfers include debt forgiveness, investment grants, and certain disaster-related nonlife insurance claims. Nonproduced nonfinancial assets include the acquisition and disposal of natural resources, outright sales and purchases of franchises and trademarks, and fees paid by one sporting franchise to another for the transfer of a player. Capital-account transactions are distinguished from current-account transactions in that capital-account transactions result in a change in the assets of one or both parties to the transaction without affecting the income or savings of either party.
The financial account consists of transactions between U.S. residents and nonresidents for direct investment, portfolio investment, other investment, reserves, and financial derivatives other than reserves.
Direct investment is a category of cross-border investment associated with a resident in one economy having control or a significant degree of influence over the management of an enterprise resident in another economy. Ownership or control of 10 percent or more of the voting securities of an entity is the threshold for separating direct investment from other types of investment. Direct investment transactions include transactions in equity (including reinvestment of earnings) and debt instruments.
Portfolio investment transactions consist of cross-border transactions involving equity and investment fund shares and debt securities, excluding those included in direct investment or reserve assets.
Other investment is a residual category that includes cross-border financial instruments other than those included in direct investment, portfolio investment, financial derivatives, and reserve assets. Other investment transactions consist of transactions in other equity (equity not in the form of securities), currency and deposits, loans, insurance technical reserves, trade credit and advances, and, for liabilities, special drawing rights allocations.
Reserve assets are those external assets that are readily available to and controlled by monetary authorities for meeting balance-of-payments financing needs, for intervention in exchange markets to affect the currency exchange rate, and for other related purposes, such as maintaining confidence in the currency and the economy and serving as a basis for foreign borrowing. The major published categories are monetary gold, International Monetary Fund (IMF) special drawing rights, reserve position in the IMF, and other reserve assets.
Financial derivatives other than reserves consist of financial contracts that are linked to underlying financial instruments, commodities, or indicators. Transactions in financial derivatives consist of U.S. cash receipts and payments arising from the sale, purchase, periodic settlement, or final settlement of financial derivatives contracts. Transactions in financial derivatives are only available as a net value equal to transactions for assets less transactions for liabilities. A positive value represents net cash payments by U.S. residents to foreign residents from settlements of derivatives contracts (net lending), and a negative value represents net U.S. cash receipts (net borrowing).
The statistical discrepancy is the difference between net acquisition of assets and net incurrence of liabilities in the financial account (including financial derivatives) less the difference between total credits and total debits recorded in the current and capital accounts. The statistical discrepancy can also be calculated as the difference between net lending (borrowing) measured from financial-account transactions and net lending (borrowing) measured from current- and capital-account transactions.
The current-account balance is the difference between credits (exports and income receipts) and debits (imports and income payments) in the current account. The balance is a net measure of current-account transactions between the United States and the rest of the world. A positive balance indicates a current-account surplus. A negative balance indicates a current-account deficit.
Net lending (borrowing) measures the balance of funds supplied to the rest of the world. Net lending means that, in net terms, the U.S. economy supplies funds to the rest of the world. Net borrowing means the opposite. Net lending (borrowing) can be measured by current- and capital-account transactions or by financial-account transactions.
Conceptually, the two measures are equal. In practice, the two measures differ by the statistical discrepancy.
Release and update cycle
Preliminary quarterly statistics for the ITAs are released in March, June, September, and December, approximately 80 days after the end of the reference quarter. These statistics are updated the following quarter to incorporate new source data. Additionally, in March, seasonally adjusted statistics for the first, second, and third quarters of the previous year are revised to force the sum of seasonally adjusted quarters to equal the annual totals; this forcing procedure is also incorporated into the preliminary fourth quarter. Quarterly statistics are open for revision for at least the prior 3 years in annual updates released in June. Preliminary annual statistics are released in March, along with statistics for the fourth quarter of the previous year. These annual statistics are open for revision for at least the prior 3 years in subsequent annual updates.
Related statistics
The ITAs constitute one part of a broader set of U.S. International Economic Accounts that, taken together, provide a comprehensive, integrated, and detailed picture of U.S. international economic activities.
The International Investment Position (IIP) Accounts are released quarterly. Financial transactions reported in the ITAs are one type of change in position recorded in the IIP Accounts.
Statistics on direct investment and multinational enterprises (MNEs) include annual statistics on the activities of U.S. MNEs and U.S. affiliates of foreign MNEs, detailed annual and quarterly statistics on direct investment, and annual statistics on new foreign direct investment in the United States.
Statistics on international services, released annually, include detailed annual information on trade in services and on services supplied through the channel of direct investment by affiliates of MNEs.
U.S. international trade in goods and services, released by BEA and the U.S. Census Bureau, provides monthly statistics on trade in goods and services.