WASHINGTON – The nation’s annual trade deficit last year was a record $763.6 billion, 6.5 percent higher than 2005’s $716.7 billion gap, the U.S. Department of Commerce Tuesday reported. But as a percentage of the U.S. gross domestic product, the goods and services deficit was virtually unchanged, at 5.8 percent.
The nation’s fifth straight record annual deficit in goods and services came as record exports were outpaced by record imports.
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U.S. exports of goods increased 14.7 percent, compared with import growth of 10.8 percent, to $182.0 billion, to $1.860 trillion. That yielded a goods trade deficit of $836.1 billion, $53.3 billion higher than in 2005.
In services, however, the nation rang up a surplus of $72.5 billion, 9.8 percent higher than in 2005, driven by services exports of $414.1 billion, up 8.8 percent over 2005’s. than in 2005.
“In the long run, I expect the deficit to gradually shrink,” Nigel Gault, director of U.S. research at Global Insight Inc. in Lexington, Mass., told Bloomberg News.
China passed Mexico, becoming the nation’s number-two trading partner; Canada remained at number one.
Additional information is available at www.bea.gov.
