Current Account Deficit Hits Record $41 Billion
The U.S. deficit in transactions with the rest of the world hit a record $41.1 billion in the second quarter, up sharply from $36.8 billion in the first three months of the year, the Commerce Department reported yesterday.</br></br>For the first half of the year, the deficit in the so-called current account, which includes trade in goods, investment income and other services, government and private remittances, tourism and military transfers, reached $77.9 billion, up from $61.5 billion in the same period a year ago.</br></br>Most of the widening of the current account deficit since last year was the result of a bigger gap between imports and exports of goods, a gap that also reached a record, $39.5 billion, in the second quarter.</br></br>But the long-standing U.S. surplus in services trade fell sharply in the second quarter. After averaging about $5 billion a quarter in 1986 and the first quarter of this year, the surplus in services dwindled to $1.3 billion, according to the seasonally adjusted but preliminary figures released yesterday.</br></br>The numbers can vary substantially from quarter to quarter and reconciliation of all of the trade and other flows into and out of the United States often leaves a large statistical discrepancy. However, analysts expressed concern about the new evidence that the United States is importing, in one form or another, ever more than it is exporting.