In the 1980s, many heads of large global companies believed the future of their success was in Japan. Its economy was a juggernaut, which fell apart and has never been entirely repaired. More recently, China has been seen as the next great country to drive sales of multinationals. Now, its gross domestic product (GDP) growth has slowed. That leaves the United States, the world’s largest economy, as the most attractive for executives at multinationals.

The PricewaterhouseCoopers Annual Global CEO Survey showed that in the first time in five years:

[M]ore business leaders rate the US as their most important market for overseas growth ahead of all others, including China’s.

That is largely due to the belief among the titans that U.S. GDP growth will be 3.2% this year.

The survey confirms what organizations such as the World Bank and International Monetary Fund have already acknowledged. The United States will be the only large region in the world that will grow faster than was forecast in early 2014. More recent forecasts show that the rest of the world has faltered economically.

Advances in technology have been a cornerstone of improving business opportunity. Leading CEOs confirm that:

Great advances in technology and science are giving us building blocks to solve problems that in turn, are giving rise to new business models that can better meet and even create demand. For CEOs, it means great opportunities to create value in areas they have not gone before by combining the right building blocks together.

While it is easy to see how that helps technology-based companies, it is harder to make a case for the likes of cereal and soft drink makers. Maybe technology allows them quicker feedback on how their products are doing. Since the United States is the major source of advanced technology, somehow the research makes sense.

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Methodology: PwC surveyed 1,322 business leaders across 77 countries between September 25 and December 9 in 2014, including 103 CEOs in the United States, for insights on how businesses are setting a course for growth. PwC also sat down with 28 U.S. CEOs to gain greater context.

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