If Argentina Were A U.S. State?

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Cronista, Argentina’s leading financial newspaper, ran an interesting piece Monday which was basically a translation of an older, and more widely-circulated blog-post comparing the size of various countries’ economies with the size of the economies of the 50 U.S. states.

The original post, which reviewed GDP data from around the world, said Argentina’s economy would be roughly the equivalent of Michigan’s. If the data here is to be trusted, Argentina’s economy – that is, its annual GDP – is about US $210 billion, making it the 31st largest in the world. That’s up from 32nd in 2006.

The world’s largest economy is really a collection of nations otherwise known as the European Union. The EU’s GDP last year totaled US $13.62 trillion, putting it just ahead of the U.S., whose gross domestic output in 2007 was US $13.22 billion.

Mexico has the biggest economy in Latin America at US $721 billion annually. This makes its economic output roughly equivalent to that of Illinois. Brazil comes in second place (in Latin America) at US $621 billion. Brazil’s economy is about the equivalent to that of New York State, according to this measurement.

The biggest U.S. state economy is easily California’s, which, again according to this estimate, is roughly the same size as France’s economy. In geo-economic terms, this would make California’s economy the eighth-largest in the world, when compared with other countries. Oddly, some major economies such as China’s were left out of this map equation.

Argentina’s GDP has grown non-stop since 2002, when it tanked 10.9% amid a terrible economic crisis, according to the Argentine Economy Ministry. Since then it has grown an average of almost 9% annually, making it one of the fastest growing economies on the planet.

Link: Original GDP-State Map Story
Link: This piece includes updated GDP data that matches states with countries