President Donald Trump has tapped one of his top economic aides to serve as a Federal Reserve governor, in a move that could put ongoing pressure on the chair of the central bank, Jerome Powell.
Stephen Miran, the chairman of the president’s Council of Economic Advisers, has been nominated to temporarily fill a vacant seat on the board until January 31, giving the president an additional vote to advance his longstanding desire to cut interest rates.
Trump announced the decision in a post on Thursday, the day that his latest tariff policies kicked into gear.
“He has been with me from the beginning of my Second Term, and his expertise in the World of Economics is unparalleled,” Trump said, touting Miran’s Harvard University credentials.
“He will do an outstanding job.”
Miran’s appointment comes as Trump remains increasingly frustrated with Powell, who the president has spent months attacking over monetary policy and a multi-billion-dollar renovation of the Fed’s headquarters in Washington.
But Powell, in turn, has clapped back at the president, suggesting that the Fed would have cut interest rates by now if Trump’s tariffs weren’t so substantial.
While Trump has ruled out firing the Central Bank chair, at least for now, speculation has swirled in recent weeks that he would try to nominate a “shadow chair” whose job would be to largely act as an agitator on the board to voice the White House’s positions.
Miran has previously been critical of the Fed, particularly over its stimulus actions during the global pandemic.
He is also the author of the contentious “Mar-A-Lago Accord,” which has the goal of devaluing the dollar as a way of managing America’s deficit problem.
If approved by the Senate, Miran will sit in the seat vacated by former governor Adriana Kugler, who announced last week that she would step down from the Fed board this Friday to resume her professorship at Georgetown University.
