The 19 countries with the most powerful passports

The Passport IndexIf you have citizenship in Sweden, you have a great deal of traveling power - Swedes can fly to 158 countries without ever showing a visa. This makes international travel cheaper and easier than it is for citizens of many other countries, like those of Afghanistan, who can enter just 23 countries without a visa.

These stark differences are revealed in the Passport Index, which ranks countries based on the number of nations where residents can go without purchasing a visa in advance or on arrival. The global financial advisory firm Arton Capital compiled government data from 193 countries and six territories to create the 2017 ranking.

The US makes the top 15, but that could change over the next four years under the Trump administration, according to Arton Capital CEO John Hanafin. If US foreign-policy relations sour with other countries, like Mexico and Germany, visa-free agreements could freeze or break, which would damage passport power for Americans.

The European Commission recently told the Wall Street Journal that it will not impose visas on American travelers after the US excluded five EU countries from its no-visa list, however.

Here are the 19 countries with the highest-ranking passports.