For years we’ve been hearing about how China and other emerging markets have surpassed the US as the driver of global growth. But in an interview with WealthTrack, top-rated economist Nancy Lazar says several factors have the US back in its role as the driver of global economic growth and China lagging.

Lazar says that China has built up a “tremendous amount of excesses”, particularly in investment and credit, and is now in the early stages of unwinding those bubbles. That means growth must slow there. The US, meanwhile, has dealt with its excesses, Lazar says. While she’s not expecting gangbusters growth, she says the US economy should grow at around 3.5% going forward. For 2014, she expects China’s growth to come in around 6% to 6.5% and the US around 2.5%, which, she says, is actually good enough to make the US the larger grower on a dollar basis. She says the US also has an energy renaissance and a manufacturing renaissance going for it, and says she thinks the US has at least 3 to 5 years to go in a capital spending and housing recovery.

[youtube=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iKj5ttJuWcY]