The economy of South Carolina was ranked the 25th largest in the United States based on gross domestic product in 2022. Tourism, centered around Myrtle Beach, Charleston, and Hilton Head Island, is the state's largest industry. The state's other major economic sector is advanced manufacturing located primarily in the Upstate and the Lowcountry.
Before rapidly industrializing in the 1950s, South Carolina primarily had an agricultural economy throughout its history. During the antebellum period, the state's economy was based almost solely on the exportation of cotton and rice cultivated using the labor of enslaved Africans. By the time of the American Revolution, the exportation of rice to Europe made the Lowcountry the wealthiest region in North America. Nonetheless, South Carolina's economic importance in the union began to decline following the Panic of 1819 and the expansion of cotton cultivation in the Old Southwest.
The profitability of cotton tied the state closer to the institution of slavery; encouraging planters to invest in more land and enslaved laborers to the detriment of economic diversification. In a failed attempt to stop the abolition of slavery, South Carolina was the first state to declare for secession following the election of Abraham Lincoln. The ensuing American Civil War brought freedom to the enslaved population as well as destruction and desolation to the state's economy.
In 1922, following a series of natural disasters and the arrival of the boll weevil in 1917, South Carolina could no longer rely on the cultivation of rice and cotton. Like many other states, the defense contracts that came with World War II and the New Deal construction policies during President Franklin D. Roosevelt's administration aided South Carolina's industrialization efforts. Starting in the 1960s, South Carolina became one of the first states to begin soliciting direct foreign investment which furthered the state's transformation away from agriculture and the textile industry.
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