Perhaps most commonly, the current account balance is portrayed as the difference between a nation's exports, broadly defined, and its imports. From this perspective, the determinants of the current account balance are roughly the same as the determinants of the trade balance: exchange rates, prices, and incomes at home and abroad.
Accordingly, the widening of the U.S. current account deficit is frequently attributed to the strengthening of the dollar since the mid-1990s, which led U.S. imports to be cheaper measured in dollars and U.S. exports to be more expensive in foreign currency. According to a second perspective, the current account balance is defined as the difference between a nation's saving and its investment.