Balance of Trade

The monthly Balance of Trade is exports, or sales abroad, minus imports, or purchases from abroad; negative is deficit and positive is surplus. It headlines the joint U.S. International Trade report of the Census Bureau and the Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA), running from 1992. It covers goods and services between foreign countries and the 50 states plus listed territories on a balance of payments basis for comparability. Goods use complete customs records and services use surveys, with seasonal adjustment for calendar effects but no price adjustment.

It covers 1 calendar month and appears about 34 to 36 days after month end at 8:30 AM Eastern on a scheduled weekday. An advance goods report comes days earlier, with the full release adding services detail, supplements, exhibits, and 3-month averages. Revisions follow fixed rules: prior months update monthly, deeper rounds use fuller quarterly data, and June brings annual overhauls. Federal shutdowns or combined releases can shift dates, and the release reports only levels and changes, with no target, adjusted for seasonality, not prices.

The total is goods plus services, so each side can widen or narrow the gap.

• Foods, Feeds, and Beverages: farm and food shipments such as soybeans, corn, wheat, and nuts.

• Industrial Supplies and Materials: crude oil, nonmonetary gold, finished metal shapes, and natural gas.

• Capital Goods: civilian aircraft, computers, accessories, and semiconductors.

• Automotive Vehicles, Consumer Goods, and Other Goods: passenger cars, pharmaceutical preparations, plus a residual group.

• Services: 11 categories including transport, travel, construction, insurance, finance, intellectual property charges, telecom, business, cultural, and government services.

• Net balance of payments adjustments: coverage and valuation bridges from customs records to comparable concepts, shown as 1 net line.

In March 2025 (released May 6, 2025) the deficit reached $140.5 billion, up $17.3 billion or 14.0% from $123.2 billion in February. Exports rose $0.5 billion to $278.5 billion while imports rose $17.8 billion to $419.0 billion. The goods deficit grew $16.5 billion to $163.5 billion as consumer goods imports jumped $22.5 billion. Pharmaceutical preparations alone rose $20.9 billion on stockpiling ahead of tariffs.

Services surplus eased $0.8 billion to $23.0 billion, so the record gap since 1992 came from import strength, not export weakness.

1. Census-basis goods: Compile complete customs documents into Census-basis goods. Value exports f.a.s., alongside the ship including inland freight, and imports at customs value without duties or freight.

1. Balance of payments (BOP) conversion: BEA adds or deducts gold, carrier fuel, merchanting, repairs, military, gifts, software, low-value, and inland freight items.

1. Services: Services come from surveys and reports, with missing months interpolated from quarterly data by the Denton quarterly-to-monthly method.

1. Seasonal adjustment: Seasonal adjustment runs X-13ARIMA-SEATS on about 140 export and 140 import categories summed to 6 aggregates. Treat aircraft separately for trends, since country data do not sum to global totals.

1. Headline balance: Total exports equal BOP goods plus services, total imports the same sum, and balance equals exports minus imports. Negative means deficit, positive means surplus, as goods balance plus services balance.

1. Side computations: Side figures show a 3-month average of the month plus 2 prior months, and real chained-2017-dollar goods from price indexes. For illustration, goods at minus 165.0 plus services at plus 24.0 gives a $141.0 billion deficit.