U.S. services surplus triples to $289B and redefines America’s trade balance

The quiet rise of America’s services economy

Twenty years ago, services were the quiet background players in America’s trade game, reliable, but rarely made the news. Back in the early 2000s, the U.S. services surplus hovered around $70–100 billion a year. Fast forward to 2024, and that number has more than tripled.

Last year, the U.S. sold $1.1 trillion worth of services to the world, from Hollywood films to Wall Street advice to software running on servers continents away. Imports totaled $812 billion, leaving a $289 billion surplus—the thirteenth straight year that cushion has stayed above $200 billion.

Meanwhile, the goods deficit has moved in the opposite direction. In 2024, America imported $3.3 trillion in goods while exporting just $2.1 trillion, creating a record-setting $1.2 trillion deficit. 

What’s behind the shift?

Part of it is economic evolution. The U.S. has been quietly moving away from heavy manufacturing toward industries built on ideas, talent, and intellectual property. Planes, petroleum, and transportation equipment still leave American ports, but the real growth engines now are intangibles: financial services, IP royalties, cloud computing, education, and entertainment.

Measuring these services is tricky. Goods are visible—tracked at ports and customs checkpoints. Services can be invisible, delivered digitally or experienced in person: a streaming subscription in Singapore, tuition from a U.S. university, or royalties from a Hollywood film. U.S. multinationals often serve foreign clients through local subsidiaries. The value might be created in San Francisco or New York, but it’s booked in Singapore or London. In 2022, those overseas affiliates brought in over $2 trillion in service revenues for American companies—while foreign-owned affiliates earned $1.5 trillion here in the U.S. 

If you factor in these hidden flows, America’s real services surplus could be nearly three-quarters the size of the goods deficit.

The bigger economic picture

Economists will tell you a trade deficit isn’t just about exports and imports—it’s about how much a country saves versus how much it spends. The U.S. consistently spends more than it earns, and the gap is filled by foreign investment or lending. In this sense, the services surplus is not just an export win, rather it’s a partial offset to a structural imbalance.

And so far, it’s working. In 2024, the U.S. economy grew steadily despite geopolitical tensions and supply chain hiccups. Services are part of why: they’re less dependent on shipping lanes, less exposed to raw material shortages, and they can scale at the speed of software. Globally, services trade is growing three times faster than goods trade, and now tops $8 trillion a year.

Why business leaders should care

For business leaders, future competitiveness will hinge less on what you manufacture and more on what you know and can deliver globally. The most resilient, scalable opportunities are in services that cross borders without crossing oceans: AI-driven analytics, subscription platforms, cloud-based solutions, proprietary consulting. 

If you run a product company, the question is: What service layer could you add? If you already sell services, how do you make them global? In a knowledge-based economy, the competitive edge lies in building something that can be sold again and again, anywhere in the world.