IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/lmu/muenar/78268.html

What Do We Really Know about the Transatlantic Current Account?

Author

Listed:
  • Braml, Martin T.
  • Felbermayr, Gabriel J.

Abstract

Do the USA have a current account surplus or a deficit with the EU? Since 2009, official sources disagree: The U.S. Department of Commerce claims a consistent US surplus while Eurostat reports the opposite. International transactions are notoriously difficult to measure accurately, but the size of the transatlantic discrepancy is extremely substantial: over the last 10 years, it has grown to a cumulated 1 Trillion USD. In times of severe trade policy disagreements across the Atlantic, this gap is obviously problematic. This article tries to dissect the transatlantic reporting gap. Two country-pairs-USA-UK and USA-Netherlands-account for almost the entire transatlantic discrepancy, which, in 2017, stood at about 180 billion USD. In the former case, national statistics on net services trade disagree by as much as 55 billion USD;in the latter case, there is a reporting difference in net primary income of about 60 billion USD. In contrast, data provided by the Bundesbank for the German-US current account closely mirror US data. Nonrandom measurement error and, possibly, deliberate manipulation seem to cause the observed discrepancies.

Suggested Citation

  • Braml, Martin T. & Felbermayr, Gabriel J., 2019. "What Do We Really Know about the Transatlantic Current Account?," Munich Reprints in Economics 78268, University of Munich, Department of Economics.
    • Handle: RePEc:lmu:muenar:78268
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    To our knowledge, this item is not available for download. To find whether it is available, there are three options:
    1. Check below whether another version of this item is available online.
    2. Check on the provider's web page whether it is in fact available.
    3. Perform a
    for a similarly titled item that would be available.

    Other versions of this item:

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Gabriel J. Felbermayr, 2020. "Transatlantische Handelspolitik vor, während und nach Trump," Wirtschaftsdienst, Springer;ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics, vol. 100(12), pages 908-913, December.
    2. Felbermayr, Gabriel & Yotov, Yoto V., 2021. "From theory to policy with gravitas: A solution to the mystery of the excess trade balances," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 139(C).
    3. Felbermayr, Gabriel & Stamern, Vincent, 2021. "Transatlantischer Neustart: Vorschläge zur handelspolitischen Zusammenarbeit zwischen EU und USA," Studien, Stiftung Familienunternehmen / Foundation for Family Businesses, number 250014.
    4. Braml, Martin & Felbermayr, Gabriel, 2021. "Die USA sind mit großem Abstand Europas wichtigster Wirtschaftspartner," Kiel Policy Briefs 150, Kiel Institute for the World Economy.
    5. Martin T. Braml & Gabriel J. Felbermayr, 2022. "The EU self-surplus puzzle: an indication of VAT fraud?," International Tax and Public Finance, Springer;International Institute of Public Finance, vol. 29(5), pages 1075-1097, October.
    6. Bickenbach, Frank & Görg, Holger & Liu, Wan-Hsin, 2025. "Transatlantic ties beyond goods trade: Significance and policy implications of EU-U.S. services trade," Kiel Policy Briefs 193, Kiel Institute for the World Economy.
    7. Henning Vöpel & Harms Bandholz & Gabriel Felbermayr & Christoph Spengel & Jost Heckemeyer & Martin Mosler & Niklas Potrafke & Henrik Müller & Gabriel J. Felbermayr, 2020. "Die USA vor dem Wahlkampf: Die Spuren Donald Trumps in Wirtschaft und Politik," ifo Schnelldienst, ifo Institute - Leibniz Institute for Economic Research at the University of Munich, vol. 73(01), pages 03-29, January.
    8. Felbermayr, Gabriel & Hinz, Julian & Langhammer, Rolf J., 2024. "US trade policy after 2024: What is at stake for Europe?," Kiel Policy Briefs 178, Kiel Institute for the World Economy.
    9. Christian Grimme, 2020. "Zu den globalen Leistungsbilanzsalden im Jahr 2019," ifo Schnelldienst, ifo Institute - Leibniz Institute for Economic Research at the University of Munich, vol. 73(02), pages 49-53, February.
    10. Felbermayr, Gabriel & Stamern, Vincent, 2021. "Transatlantic restart: Proposals for trade cooperation between the EU and the United States," Studien, Stiftung Familienunternehmen / Foundation for Family Businesses, number 250017.
    11. Gabriel J. Felbermayr & Katrin Kamin & Sonali Chowdhry & Julian Hinz & Anna_Katharina Jacobs & Sandra Kill & Alexander Sandkamp, 2021. "Perspektiven einer erfolgreichen europäischen Handelspolitik im Kontekt geopolitischer Herausforderungen," FIW Research Reports series y:2021:m:05, FIW.
    12. Elisabeth Christen & Gabriel Felbermayr & Hendrik Mahlkow & Alexander Sandkamp, 2025. "Transatlantische Kooperation statt Zollkrieg. Szenarien, Optionen, Lösungsansätze," WIFO Studies, WIFO, number 60176049.
    13. Bickenbach Frank & Görg Holger & Liu Wan-Hsin, 2026. "Services at the Core: The Missing Piece of Transatlantic Trade Talks?," Intereconomics: Review of European Economic Policy, Sciendo, vol. 61(1), pages 50-58.

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • F14 - International Economics - - Trade - - - Empirical Studies of Trade
    • F32 - International Economics - - International Finance - - - Current Account Adjustment; Short-term Capital Movements
    • H26 - Public Economics - - Taxation, Subsidies, and Revenue - - - Tax Evasion and Avoidance

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:lmu:muenar:78268. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Tamilla Benkelberg (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/vfmunde.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.