United States President Donald Trump has said he will nominate Stephen Miran, a top economic adviser to the US Federal Reserve’s board of governors, for four months, temporarily filling a vacancy while continuing his search for a longer-term appointment.
The president announced his decision on Thursday.
Miran, the chair of the White House’s Council of Economic Advisers, would fill a seat vacated by Governor Adriana Kugler, a Biden appointee who is stepping down Friday. Kugler is returning to her tenured professorship at Georgetown University.
The term expires January 31, 2026, and is subject to approval by the Senate. Trump said the White House continues to search for someone to fill the 14-year Fed board seat that opens on February 1.
Miran, who served as an economic adviser in the Department of the Treasury during the first Trump administration, has advocated for a far-reaching overhaul of Fed governance that would include shortening board member terms, putting them under the clear control of the president, and ending the “revolving door” between the executive branch and the Fed and nationalising the Fed’s 12 regional banks.
The appointment is Trump’s first opportunity to exert more control over the Fed, one of the few remaining federal agencies that is still independent. Trump has relentlessly criticised the current chair, Jerome Powell, for keeping short-term interest rates unchanged – a major point of contention between the White House and the central bank.
Miran has been a major defender of Trump’s income tax cuts and tariff hikes, arguing that the combination will generate enough economic growth to reduce budget deficits. He has also played down the risk that Trump’s tariffs will generate higher inflation, a major source of concern for Powell.
Trump has unsuccessfully pressured Fed policymakers – who include Powell, his six fellow board members and the 12 Fed bank presidents – to lower rates. Appointing Miran to the central bank, even in a placeholder role, gives the president a potentially more direct route to pursue his desire for easier monetary policy.
‘Trump loyalist’
It is unclear how much time Miran would have at the Fed to try to deploy his ideas, or even vote on interest rates, though.
All Fed nominees require Senate confirmation, a process that includes a hearing before the Senate Banking Committee, a vote from that panel advancing the nomination and a series of floor votes before the full Senate, where Democrats have been slowing the pace of approval for Trump appointments.
“Stephen Miran is a Trump loyalist and one of the chief architects of the President’s chaotic tariff policy that has hurt Americans’ wallets,” the Senate Banking Committee’s top-ranking Democrat, Elizabeth Warren, said on X following the announcement. “I’ll have tough questions for him about whether he’d serve the American people or merely serve Donald Trump.”
The Senate is on summer recess until September 2.
There are just four policy-setting meetings, including one on September 16-17, before the end of what would be Miran’s term.
Fed policymakers kept the policy rate in its current 4.25 percent to 4.5 percent range at their July meeting, with Powell citing somewhat elevated inflation and the concern that Trump’s tariffs could keep it that way as reasons to keep policy restrictive.
Several central bankers this month have raised concerns about labour market weakness, and at least a couple have expressed renewed confidence that tariffs may not push up inflation as much as earlier thought. Those views echo the arguments made by two Fed governors who last month dissented on the decision to leave policy on hold.
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