Trump Names Miran to Fill Seat On Federal Reserve Board

Bloomberg's Mike McKee talks President Trump's pick to fill a temporary vacancy on the Federal Reserve Board. The President chose Stephen Miran, the current chair of the Council of Economic Advisers.

President Donald Trump said he had chosen Council of Economic Advisers Chairman Stephen Miran to serve as a Federal Reserve governor.

“He has been with me from the beginning of my Second Term, and his expertise in the World of Economics is unparalleled — He will do an outstanding job,” Trump said in a social media post.

Trump said that Miran, who will need to be confirmed by the US Senate, would only serve the expiring term of Fed Governor Adriana Kugler, which ends in January.

“In the meantime, we will continue to search for a permanent replacement,” Trump said.

The Bloomberg Dollar Spot Index erased its daily gains on the news of Miran’s nomination. The Federal Reserve did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Miran has been critical of the Fed’s track record in recent years. In a March 2024 paper, Miran and Dan Katz, now chief of staff at the Treasury Department, laid out a 24-page plan for reforming the Fed that blames policy errors at the central bank on “groupthink.” It also takes the Fed to task for having expanded into political areas that they argue are beyond its remit.

“The Federal Reserve’s record in recent years raises questions about whether it has been operating in line with the best practices of central bank independence,” Miran and Katz wrote.

They called for the separation of monetary policy from banking regulation and supervision at the Fed by stripping the board of its authority over the latter. The change — which would require legislative action — would “avoid unnecessarily polluting the monetary-policy process,” they wrote.

Joe Gilbert, a portfolio manager at Integrity Asset Management, said Miran was “not an expected pick but it is within the framework that the market was looking for.”

“Miran would provide another voice to conceivably support easier Fed policy,” Gilbert said. This reinforces the belief that the Fed will be easing interest rates for the balance of the year as it is unlikely for the Fed to hold rates steady with three dissents on the board. We have officially entered an easing cycle for markets.”

Speaking on Bloomberg Television earlier Thursday, Miran said that there was “zero macroeconomically significant evidence of price pressures” from Trump’s increased use of tariffs on US trading partners.

“Overall, we don’t expect significant inflation from the tariffs,” he said. If inflation were to materialize from tariffs, “it would be a one-time price-level shift, not an enduring trend,” he said.

That view puts him somewhat at odds with Powell. The Fed chair has said that while the base case is that tariffs’ effects on inflation could be short-lived, Fed policymakers must guard against the alternative.

“It is also possible that the inflationary effects could instead be more persistent, and that is a risk to be assessed and managed,” Powell said at a July 30 press conference. Those comments followed policymakers’ decision to hold the Fed’s benchmark interest rate steady for a fifth consecutive time.

Miran on Thursday also praised Fed governor Christopher Waller when asked about Trump’s search for a replacement when Powell’s term as chair expires next May.

Waller dissented against the Fed’s decision to leave rates unchanged last month, saying he preferred a quarter-point reduction. Waller has said he expects any inflationary impact from tariffs to result in a one-time increase in the level of prices, while raising concerns about growing signs of weakness in the labor market.

“He’s done himself a big credit recently as well not succumbing to the tariff derangement syndrome that many others throughout the country, but particularly at the Fed, seem to have succumbed to,” Miran said. “He’s done a really good job having an independent voice.”

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