World Clock / Taiwan / vs United States

🇹🇼 Taiwan vs 🇺🇸 United States

Live side-by-side comparison of government debt. The United States currently owes about 187.8× as much as Taiwan — a gap of $40.18 trillion. Updated every second from each country's baseline figure; sources below.

🇹🇼
Taiwan
$215,126,873,433
Debt-to-GDP24%
Per citizen$9,273
Per second−$71
VS
🇺🇸
United States
$40,395,706,400,242
Debt-to-GDP124%
Per citizen$117,827
Per second+$60,200
In nominal terms, the United States carries the larger government debt — roughly 187.8× that of Taiwan, a difference of $40.18 trillion. Debt-to-GDP (Taiwan: 24%, United States: 124%) says more about the burden than the raw total does.

Among the 135 governments tracked here, Taiwan ranks 129th by debt-to-GDP and the United States 12th. Measured per person, Taiwan is 57th and the United States 2nd.

Analysis

By total government debt, Taiwan ranks 42nd and the United States 1st among the 135 sovereigns tracked on this site.

On a per-citizen basis the picture can look different from the nominal totals: a resident's notional share of the government debt in the United States is roughly 12.7× that in Taiwan ($117,827 vs $9,273 per person).

The debt-to-GDP picture is asymmetric here: the United States sits at 124% of GDP, well above Taiwan's 24%, meaning the United States owes far more relative to the size of its own economy — even where the nominal, dollar-for-dollar comparison above suggests otherwise.

The gap between them is widening: the United States' debt is growing faster in dollar terms ($60K/sec vs −$71/sec for Taiwan), adding roughly $5,207,414,400 to the difference each day.

Scale is part of the story too: the United States' population (343M) is about 14.8× Taiwan's (23M), which is part of why the nominal and per-capita comparisons above can point in different directions — a government's debt load scales loosely with the size of both its economy and its population, not either alone.

This analysis is generated automatically from live data as an educational orientation, not financial advice — see the methodology page for definitions and caveats.

Compare API ↗ 📑 Embed this counter

More Taiwan comparisons

Source: Global Debt Clock, based on the IMF World Economic Outlook (October 2026, general government gross debt) and US Treasury data for the United States.
Live data: /api/compare?a=tw&b=us · Taiwan page · United States page
World debt map · Rankings · Insights · Privacy Cookie settings · Terms · Contact