By Sharon Nunn 

WASHINGTON -- The U.S. current-account deficit, a measure of the nation's trade and financial flows with other countries, narrowed to $101.46 billion in the second quarter from $121.71 billion in the first quarter, the Commerce Department said Wednesday.

Economists surveyed by The Wall Street Journal had expected a $103.2 billion deficit.

Last quarter's deficit decline stemmed from increased services and goods exports. Foreign purchases of industrial supplies and materials, energy products and soybeans led the second quarter's exported-goods growth. On the services side, a bump in professional and management consulting services, financial services and charges for intellectual-property use, helped shrink the deficit.

Another part of the report showed companies have continued to move overseas money back into the U.S. in recent months at an almost cautious pace. Dividends and withdrawals, a sub-measure of investment income and a gauge of companies' repatriation, was $169.5 billion in the second quarter. This was in line with analyst expectations of $150 billion to $200 billion, but down from the first quarter, when U.S. companies repatriated $294.9 billion.

A Wall Street Journal analysis previously found publicly traded U.S. companies were tepidly repatriating money stashed overseas, with about two-thirds of some of the recent inflows coming from two corporations -- networking-equipment giant Cisco Systems Inc. and drugmaker Gilead Sciences Inc. Beyond that, companies have announced plans to repatriate an additional $37 billion.

The deficit fell to 2% of current-dollar gross domestic product in 2018's second quarter from 2.4% in the first three months of this year.

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 U.S. has run persistent trade deficits for decades 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 headline figures could be skewed significantly by soybean exporters rushing to deliver product to places like China before recent trade actions by the Trump administration and retaliatory tariffs materialize.

Write to Sharon Nunn at sharon.nunn@wsj.com

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

September 19, 2018 10:47 ET (14:47 GMT)

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