US Current-Account Deficit Hits $246B in Second Quarter 2026
The gap widened 15.7% from Q1, reaching 3% of GDP, as America's net investment position fell to negative $22.42 trillion.
The U.S. current-account deficit surged to $246.0 billion in the second quarter of 2026, a $33.4 billion increase from a revised $212.6 billion in the first quarter, the Bureau of Economic Analysis reported. The quarterly jump of 15.7 percent marks a notable acceleration in the gap between what the United States earns from and pays to the rest of the world through trade, services, income, and transfers.
As a share of the broader economy, the deficit climbed to 3.0 percent of current-dollar gross domestic product, up from 2.7 percent in the first quarter. That widening ratio signals that the external imbalance is growing faster than the domestic economy, a dynamic that analysts often watch as an indicator of long-term currency and trade pressures.
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Separately, the BEA reported that the U.S. net international investment position — the gap between American residents' holdings of foreign assets and foreign claims on U.S. assets — stood at negative $22.42 trillion at the close of the second quarter. U.S. residents held $46.97 trillion in foreign assets, while total liabilities to foreign investors reached $69.39 trillion. That compares with a revised net position of negative $21.27 trillion at the end of the first quarter, a deterioration of roughly $1.15 trillion in a single quarter.
The net international investment position figure underscores the cumulative scale of America's external borrowing over decades. A persistently negative and deepening position means the United States owes considerably more to the rest of the world than it owns abroad, a structural feature of the economy that economists link to persistent current-account shortfalls.
Continue reading at U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis.
