Trump nominates White House economist Stephen Miran to Federal Reserve board

President Trump on Thursday said he’ll nominate Stephen Miran, a top White House economic adviser, for the vacant seat on the Federal Reserve Board of Governors as the president feuds with the central bank over its failure to lower interest rates.

Mr. Miran is currently the chair of the Council of Economic Advisers. The president said in a social media post that Mr. Miran will serve in the seat until the end of January, while the search continues for a permanent replacement.

“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,” Mr. Trump wrote.

Mr. Miran will fill the seat that was held by Adriana Kugler, who resigned last week.

Ms. Kugler’s term was set to end in January, but she will instead finish Friday. She has served as governor since September 2023.

“It has been an honor of a lifetime to serve on the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System,” she wrote in her resignation letter. “I am especially honored to have served during a critical time in achieving our dual mandate of bringing down prices and keeping a strong and resilient labor market.”

She didn’t give a reason for her resignation.

Ms. Kugler, a Democrat, was the first Hispanic Fed governor. Prior to starting on the board, she was a professor at Georgetown University and was the U.S. representative to the World Bank.

“I am proud to have tackled this role with integrity, a strong commitment to serving the public, and with a data-driven approach strongly based on my expertise in labor markets and inflation,” she wrote.

Mr. Miran has been openly critical of the Fed, much like the president, who has railed against how Fed Chair Jerome Powell is running the central bank and hasn’t lowered interest rates.

Earlier this year he co-wrote a paper that said the Treasury Department manipulated debt markets to make the economy look good ahead of the November election. The department has denied the allegation.

Mr. Miran also was openly critical of Mr. Powell, calling him “wrong politically and economically when he urged Congress to ‘go big’ on fiscal stimulus in October of 2020, on the eve of a Presidential election, suggesting that voters favor Democrats’ $3 trillion proposals over Republicans’ $500 billion.”

“We know what happened next,” Mr. Miran said.

After the Fed decided to leave interest rates unchanged last week, Mr. Miran criticized Mr. Powell for not lowering the rates. 

“What we’re seeing now in real time is a repetition once again of this pattern where the president will end up having been proven right,” Mr. Miran said on MSNBC. “And the Fed will, with a lag and probably quite too late, eventually catch up to the president’s view.”

He has also been a big defender of Mr. Trump’s tariff proposals and income tax-cut plans.

Mr. Powell has said the Fed wants more time to assess whether Mr. Trump’s tariffs will cause prices to rise. The Fed will meet again in September to consider a rate reduction. It’s not clear whether the Senate will move on Mr. Miran’s nomination before its next meeting.