It’s Trump’s economy now

In The New York Times, Stephen Moore writes that “few Presidents can claim to have presided over the kind of economy the United States is enjoying now.” Moore notes that “the economy grew at a rate of about 3 percent in the last three quarters, something that economists said was very unlikely just a year ago.”

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“Alex Azar was sworn Monday as secretary of the Health and Human Services Department, filling a critical seat in President Trump’s cabinet,” The Washington Times reported. “Republicans say Mr. Azar has a firm grasp of how HHS works and that his decade at Eli Lilly, a drug company, will give him an insider’s perspective as the administration tries to inject more competition into the prescription-drug market,” Tom Howell Jr. writes. “Mr. Trump immediately tasked Mr. Azar with driving down prescription drug prices, saying other countries ‘pay a tiny fraction’ of Americans fork out for the same pills.”

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National Economic Council Director Gary Cohn writes in CNN that after President Trump’s address in Davos, major business and political leaders “can once again look to the United States as one of the most competitive and lucrative places to invest in the world, because ‘America is open for business.’” Cohn explains that “investment in America does not just benefit the United States -- it benefits the world. When our economy grows, it is good for the world. When the world economy grows, it is good for the United States.”

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The Associated Press reports that companies are “paying their workers higher wages and salaries in the latest signs that the U.S. economy continues to improve,” according to a new survey from the National Association for Business Economics. “Nearly half of the surveys’ respondents said that their wages and salaries rose over the past three months. None, meanwhile, said that they cut pay for workers,” Stan Choe writes.