Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross proclaims that President Donald Trump’s fulfilling his campaign vows is the main reason the stock market continues to soar.
"We're lowering taxes, we're cutting regulations, we're stimulating the workforce, helping to develop the workforce of the future, unleashing our energy resources and redoing our trade agreements," Ross told CNBC.
"That's the whole package that President Trump was elected on, and it's the whole package that's driven the stock market to $4 trillion of gains since the election."
Since the election, the Dow Jones industrial average has surged more than 16 percent, the S&P 500 has gained more than 13 percent and the Nasdaq composite has risen 18 percent as of Friday's close, CNBC.com reported.
Ross said Trump's cutting of regulations has been effective.
"The single most important thing that President Donald Trump has been achieving is the regulatory unwind," Ross said. "The amount of red tape that's been cut out is celebrated by every single CEO that comes to visit with me because that's what has been strangling this country."
Ross said the United States would like to bolster technology investing.
"The high-tech people, the internet people, the artificial intelligence people. Those are where a lot of the future will be," he said.
"We're certainly not going to neglect the historic industries," he added. "But we must look forward to the growth engines of the future."
Meanwhile, another respected business icon also applauded Trump's early accomplishments.
Anthony Puzder, the former chief executive of CKE Restaurants who was President Donald Trump’s first pick for U.S. labor secretary, said the new administration is having many positive effects on the economy.
The most important indicator is the rise in household income, which gained more in the first three months of the Trump presidency than during the entire seven and a half years of the Obama recovery. Median household income has surged $1,300 since the beginning of the year to $59,361, compared with a $1,000 gain during the Obama years.
“President Trump’s focus on reining in the administrative state has significantly reduced both the number of existing regulations and the output of new regulations, driving business optimism,” Puzder said in an opinion piece for The Hill. “Unlike policies that increase the oppressiveness of government, policies that incentivize business growth (like deregulation) produce jobs, opportunity and prosperity.”
(Newsmax wire services contributed to this report).