Charts are keyboard readable: focus a chart, then use the left and right arrow keys to step one reading at a time, hold Shift to step a year (ten readings on a yearly chart), Home and End for the first and last month, Escape to let go. In the timeline, tab to Window Start or Window End and use the arrow keys to move it.
Imports to GDP
About This Indicator
What Are Imports?
Everything the country buys from abroad, goods and services, as a share of the economy, from the Bureau of Economic Analysis.
Why Does It Matter?
For a family, imports mean lower prices and wider choice; for a plant that competes with them, they can mean lost sales. The share moves with prices, not just volumes: an oil shock, like crude's roughly fourfold rise in 1973 and 1974, raises the import bill even if not one more barrel arrives.
Can Politics Influence Them?
Tariffs and quotas raise import prices directly. Demand, the dollar, and supply chains built over decades set the rest.
Key Idea
Imports carry a minus sign in the GDP formula only because they were already counted once, inside consumer spending, investment, and government purchases. An imported car's border price adds nothing to GDP and takes nothing away; what American shippers and dealers add is domestic output.
Not Scored
Source: BEA. NIPA Table 1.1.5 (B020RC, B021RC) over GDP.
Loading the dataset…