Dive Brief:
- After weathering 15 months of rapid policy shifts under the second Trump administration, C-suite leaders in the United States consistently see themselves as ahead of their peers across key operations. However, a new report from PricewaterhouseCoopers found that most companies have largely taken the same strategic actions.
- The report, released Monday and based on a survey of more than 600 U.S. CEOs and executives, found that the majority of corporate leaders think their companies beat competitors in areas like operational efficiency, risk management, supply chain resilience and decision-making speed.
- While executives have made some operational shifts since January 2025 — like investing in artificial intelligence — most are often making the same changes, potentially minimizing the impact on their companies, the survey found. In response to a question about how executives are working to compete more effectively, 73% reported taking one to three of the most commonly cited actions, according to the report.
Dive Insight:
PwC conducted the survey in March with 633 CEOs, corporate finance, technology risk and tax executives and board members. The survey also found that 90% of respondents believe their companies are in stronger positions than they were two years ago.
PwC said the increased confidence shows a “sharp shift” in C-suites, after its May 2025 executive survey found that 57% percent of respondents said they felt they were missing opportunities due to their decision-making speed 100 days into the new administration.
The report also found that executives who were most likely to exhibit confidence in their companies outperforming their peers when it came to assessing risk and opportunities belonged to the financial services sector, while executives that were most likely to say they were lagging on efficient decision-making and execution were from the consumer markets sector.
PwC posited that one reason for the increased confidence is that executives reported taking an average of four strategic actions since Trump’s inauguration. Companies were most likely to report taking actions aligned with operational and supply chain adjustments (65%) and technology and digital transformation (58%), according to the report.
Over a third of respondents reported increasing AI and technology investments (38%), increasing proactive risk management (36%), adjusting trade strategies (35%) or rebalancing human roles and AI in their workforce models (33%).
The commonality of such changes lessens the impact of the moves themselves and increases the importance of execution, according to the report. PwC executive Michelle Horton said Monday in a press release that “when every company is making the same moves … those actions stop differentiating and become the cost of competing.”
“Too many organizations are mistaking table stakes for advantage,” Horton said. “The question isn’t whether you’re acting — it’s whether you’re executing better and differently enough to pull ahead.”
Fifty-six percent of respondents said their business changes since last January have been significantly influenced by macroeconomic and capital markets conditions and cybersecurity and tech disruptions, the survey found.
Over half of respondents also reported that changes were significantly influenced by energy availability, reliability and cost (53%); digital and compute infrastructure capacity (53%); shifts and foreign policy and regulation (53%); U.S. policy and regulation (51%); and trade policy and enforcement changes (51%).
Executives largely reported being at least a year from seeing a return on investment in AI “beyond cost savings,” with 81% of respondents either agreeing (46%) or strongly agreeing (35%), according to the survey data. With the Trump administration’s pullback in federal funding — and a proposed 2027 budget to slash non-defense funding further — companies are also increasing internal investments to fill gaps the public sector previously filled. Eighty-eight percent of respondents reported such investments.
While President Donald Trump’s tariffs based on emergency powers were struck down by the Supreme Court, companies are incorporating tariffs into baseline assumptions. Eighty-six percent of respondents said tariffs will remain a part of planning “regardless of policy shifts.”
However, while 87% of respondents see “disruption and volatility as opportunities for competitive advantage,” the survey also found that 68% of respondents said they “struggle to translate external uncertainty into business decisions. Additionally, 65% percent of respondents said they lack the geopolitical data and analysis to “act confidently.”
In times of external disruption or risk, companies are most likely to react defensively rather than offensively, the report said. Over a third of respondents said that when major external geopolitical, policy, economic or security-related disruption occurs, the C-suite’s response is most shaped by looking to safeguard tech, data and operating networks (35%); protecting supply chain continuity (34%); preserving cash or deferring investments (34%); or activating contingency plans (33%).
“Loss-avoidance is an understandable tendency in the C-suite, especially when disruptions could affect company data or operational continuity,” the report said. “But today’s disruptions are faster and more frequent. A reflex to defend could come at a cost.”
Most survey respondents were in agreement over how issues like complex regulatory environments, AI-driven disruptions, geopolitical uncertainty, tariff policies and climate change’s impact on supply chains pose risks to companies. The majority of executives ranked these issues as a “moderate” or “serious” risk in the survey.
