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Donald Trump has said he will nominate Stephen Miran to temporarily join the Federal Reserve’s board of governors — a move that would bring a critic of chair Jay Powell on to the central bank’s policy-setting panel.
Miran, chair of the White House’s Council of Economic Advisers and a crucial Trump ally, is one of the architects of the president’s tariff policy. Miran has argued that the US’s sweeping levies would not be inflationary, a view that clashes with that of Powell and several other top Fed officials.
Miran will take the seat vacated by Adriana Kugler, who last week announced plans to leave the central bank months before her term was set to end in January. He will need to be confirmed by the Senate.
President Trump said in a Truth Social post on Thursday that Miran would serve through to the end of January as the administration continues its search for a “permanent replacement” to fill the seat.
The shake-up at the Fed comes as Trump has harshly criticised Powell for the central bank’s decision to keep rates on hold this year, with the president calling for a reduction of as much as 3 percentage points.
Powell has said the Fed needs to assess the impact of Trump’s tariffs on inflation before cutting interest rates from the current range of 4.25 to 4.5 per cent.
Miran, who holds a PhD in economics from Harvard and was previously a policy adviser at the Treasury department, will get a vote on the rate-setting Federal Open Market Committee.
Economists broadly expect him to join fellow Trump appointees Christopher Waller and Michelle Bowman in supporting the president’s calls for rate cuts. Waller and Bowman dissented with the Fed’s decision in July to hold rates steady, calling for immediate cuts in borrowing costs.
Miran said in a television interview on Thursday that many Fed officials were suffering from “tariff derangement syndrome” because of their views that tariffs would increase inflation. He has argued that Trump’s overall fiscal policies were “extremely disinflationary”, easing the need for high rates.
He has also criticised Powell for advocating for fiscal stimulus measures to fight the economic ructions caused by the coronavirus pandemic in 2020. Miran has said the Fed chief has moved too slowly on adjusting monetary policy.
JPMorgan said after Trump’s announcement on Thursday that it now expects a quarter-point rate cut at the Fed’s next meeting in September.
Some economists had already begun to pencil in a reduction in borrowing costs next month following data last week that pointed to a sharp slowdown in hiring this summer.
“Given his support of Trump’s policies, we think Miran would likely continue to act as a Trump loyalist once on the Fed board, calling for lower rates and voting for rate cuts in FOMC meetings,” said Marco Casiraghi, an economist at Evercore ISI.
Trump is widely expected to use the seat that will be filled by Miran until January as a means to replace Powell as Fed chair. Powell’s term as chair ends in May 2026, but he can stay on the Fed board until January 2028.
Before joining the Trump administration, Miran had advocated for reform of the US central bank, including shorter term lengths for officials and making the 12 regional Fed banks, which are set up like private corporations, public bodies.
He also wanted to make it easier to fire Fed officials and halt a “revolving door” between the central bank and the White House.
In a document published by the Manhattan Institute think-tank, Miran said the Fed’s institutional design had “morphed into unchecked and broad-ranging authority, tempting the Fed into straying beyond its democratically bounded role”.
Several Trump administration officials, including the Treasury secretary Scott Bessent, have called for an overhaul of the governance of the Fed.
The Fed declined to comment.