By Eric Morath 
 

WASHINGTON--The U.S. current-account deficit, a measure of the nation's trade and financial flows with other countries, widen to a seasonally adjusted $124.82 billion in the third quarter from a revised $101.22 billion in the second quarter, the Commerce Department said Wednesday.

Economists surveyed by The Wall Street Journal had expected a $126.2 billion deficit.

Here are the report's key takeaways:

--The deficit was 2.4% of current-dollar gross domestic product in the July through September period, up from 2% in the second quarter.

--The current account tracks movements of goods and services across borders as well as income from investments and other money movements, such as remittances.

--The increase in the current-account deficit mainly reflected at $23.95 billion increase in the goods-trade deficit to $227.01 billion, the department said. Goods exports decreased while imports increased during the quarter, widening the gap. Meanwhile, the surplus in services trade narrowed very slightly.

--The surplus on primary income, which includes investment income and compensation to employees, fell to $59.43 billion from $62.35 billion the prior quarter.

--Dividends and withdrawals, a subset of investment-income payments, is a gauge of companies' repatriation. That figure was $92.72 billion in the third quarter. That is down from $183.70 billion in the second quarter and $294.86 billion in the first quarter.

--Morgan Stanley economists had estimated third-quarter repatriation of between $50 billion and $100 billion.

--The tax law, put into effect this year, was intended to encourage U.S. firms to repatriate cash they had stockpiled offshore. In 2017, the year before the new law went into effect, there was an average of about $40 billion in dividends and withdrawal payments back to the U.S. each quarter.

--The deficit on secondary income, which includes government payments and private remittances, contracted to $25.59 billion from $28.97 billion in the prior quarter.

--The U.S. has run a persistent current-account deficit during the two decades for which comparable records have been kept. That's because the country imports more than it exports, as Americans consume more than they produce relative to the rest of the world's economies.

The Commerce Department report on U.S. international transactions can be found at www.bea.gov/newsreleases/rels.htm.

Write to Eric Morath at eric.morath@wsj.com

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

December 19, 2018 08:45 ET (13:45 GMT)