Specifically, GDP is the sum of:
Personal consumption expenditures consist of purchases of goods and services by households and by nonprofit ins utions serving households (NPISHs). These goods and services include imputed expenditures on items such as the services of housing by a homeowner (the equivalent of rent), financial and insurance services for which there is no explicit charge, and medical care provided to individuals and financed by government or by private insurance.
Gross private domestic investment consists of purchases of fixed assets (equipment, software, and structures) by private businesses that contribute to production and have a useful life of more than one year, of purchases of homes by households, and of private business investment in inventories. Inventory investment, which is shown as “change in private inventories,” includes the value of goods produced during a period but not sold, less sales of goods from inventories that were produced in previous periods. It is measured as ending period less beginning period inventories valued at current prices (and is equivalent to additions to, less withdrawals from, inventories), Intermediate inputs, which become an integral part of the final product and do not contribute to future production, are not included in investment.
Exports consists of goods and services that are sold or transferred by U.S. residents to residents of the rest of the world.
Imports, which is deducted in the calculation of GDP, consists of goods and services that are sold or transferred by the rest of the world to U.S. residents. The value of imports is already included in the other expenditure components of GDP, because market transactions do not distinguish the source of the goods and services. Therefore, imports must be deducted in order to derive a measure of total domestic output. Deducting total imports purchased by all sectors from total exports, rather than deducting each sector’s imports from its total expenditures, provides an analytically useful measure—net exports—that enables one to examine the effects of foreign trade on the economy.
Government consumption expenditures and gross investment measures final expenditures by Federal, state, and local governments. “Government consumption expenditures” represents the value of goods and services provided to the public by governments (such as defense or education). “Gross investment” consists of government purchases of equipment, software, and structures to use in producing those goods and services. These expenditures do not include government spending for social benefit programs (such as Medicaid), interest payments, and subsidies.