Changes in the Relative GDPs of the G20 Nations over the Last 25 Years

The American Enterprise Institute has an interesting graphic on the relative GDPs of the G20 nations over the last 25 years.  Who’s GDPs increased as a relative percentage of the total GDPs of the G20 nations and who’s fell over that time?

Note that the European Union as a whole has a membership in G20, but not being a nation is excluded from the chart above.

What I am interested in is the change in the relative percentage of the GDP of the G20 nations over the past 25 years.  Let us look at the fraction of the 2018 percentage divided by the 1992 percentage beginning with the nations that had the highest percentages 25 years ago:

USA, 30.90/31.96 = 0.9668
Japan, 7.77/19.11 =  0.4066
Germany, 5.86/10.38 = 0.5645
France, 4.12/6.85 = 0.6015
Italy, 3.08/6.43 = 0.4790
United Kingdom, 4.18/5.77 = 0.7244
Canada, 2.63/2.90 = 0.9069
Russia, 2.51/2.25 = 1.1156
China, 19.50/2.09 = 9.3301
Brazil, 3.28/1.96 = 1.6735
Mexico, 1.83/1.78 = 1.0281
South Korea, 2.44/1.71 = 1.4269
Australia, 2.11/1.59 = 1.3270
India, 4.14/1.39 = 2.9784
Argentina, 1.02/1.12 = 0.9107
Turkey, 1.36/0.77 = 1.7662
Saudi Arabia, 1.09/0.67 = 1.6269
South Africa, 0.56/0.66 = 0.8485
Indonesia, 1.62/0.63 = 2.5714

If an underdeveloped nation is not determined to shoot itself in the foot, it can commonly make easy gains on its share of the world’s GDP over time.  Similarly, the lesser developed nations of the G20 could easily have done so over the last 25 years.  Some of them have, the most remarkable one being China.  India has had the second greatest GDP surge among the G20 nations.  Third place belongs to Indonesia.  Turkey, Brazil, Saudi Arabia, South Korea, Australia, Russia, and Mexico have improved their relative positions in that order from more to less.  The gains of Russia and Mexico are actually very unimpressive.  The losers among the smaller economies of the G20 nations from biggest loser to smaller loser are South Africa and Argentina, though both were at one time relatively leading economies in the world.

Japan and the major nations of the European Union have suffered huge reductions in their significance, while the USA and Canada have seen relatively minor reductions in their relative economic significance.  The least bad performer of the major European Union nations has been the United Kingdom.  France has been the distant second least bad.  The former Axis nations of WWII have done relatively poorly with Germany being only 0.5645 as significant and Italy becoming only 0.4790 as significant.  Japan has many anti-competitive restrictions in its home economy and has a rapidly aging and shrinking population among its problems.

Both Canada and Australia have done far better than the United Kingdom, which I believe has been held back by its membership in the European Union.  If the United Kingdom simply makes a break from all of the European Union’s collectivist requirements and bureaucracy, while it will likely do worse for a while as it adjusts to the new reality, it will do much better in the long run.  The United Kingdom should aim to be more like the USA as a dynamic economic power in the world and increase its trade with the USA, Canada, Australia, and India especially.  These are all nations doing comparative well, while France, Germany, and Italy are sinking rapidly.

The EU has smothered itself with many largely irrational safety and quality control policies, which I can see as such from the standpoint of being active in materials analysis and testing.  They are using these policies to suppress goods and services from outside the EU, but the effect is to increase costs and to make local companies lazy and unresponsive in an anti-competitive environment.  In addition, the EU has been following very foolish energy policies and has swallowed the catastrophic man-made global warming fraud hook, line, and sinker, with disastrous economic results.  The inability of the bigger economies of the EU to keep up in economic growth is the result.  The USA, for all of its increased regulations and the many anti-business policies of the Obama regime, has performed much better in comparison.  With Trump decreasing the burden of unreasonable regulations and following rational energy policies, the USA is improving its relative position in the world economy.  We can do even better to the extent that we can arrange truly free trade agreements with nations around the world.