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Donald Trump chose Stephen Miran, an economist who served during his first term, to chair his Council of Economic Advisers.
With this appointment, the president-elect seeks to elevate to an economic post in the White House not only a critic of Federal Reserve Chairman Jay Powell, but also a critic who has accused the Biden administration of manipulating the economy and “usurp” the role of the central bank.
“Steve will work with the rest of my economic team to deliver a great economic boom that lifts all Americans,” Trump said in a statement Sunday.
Miran was a senior advisor for economic policy at the Treasury Department in the first Trump administration.
Currently a senior strategist at hedge fund Hudson Bay Capital Management, he said he was honored. “I look forward to helping implement the President’s policy agenda to create a growing, non-inflationary economy that brings prosperity to all Americans!” » he posted on X.
The White House Council of Economic Advisers is a three-person group that advises the president on economic policy.
Trump threatened America’s trading partners, pledging to impose draconian tariffs, including 25 percent on goods from Mexico and Canada and 10 percent on Chinese imports, on his first day mandate.
On the campaign trail, Trump pledged to impose across-the-board 20 percent levies on all U.S. imports, as well as 60 percent tariffs on those from China, suggesting his second-term policies could be more protectionist and disruptive to the global economy and markets than the first.
The president-elect also pledged to renew the tax cuts he enacted during his first term in the White House.
Earlier this year, Miran co-authored an article accusing Biden’s Treasury Department of manipulate the economy during electionsarguing that the government’s reliance on short-term debt amounts to “stealth quantitative easing and hampers the Fed’s ability to combat inflation.”
“By adjusting the maturity profile of its debt issues, Treasury dynamically manages financial conditions and, through them, the economy, usurping the essential functions of the Federal Reserve,” he wrote with the economist Nouriel Roubini.
“We call this new tool “Activist Treasury Issuance” or ATI. By manipulating the amount of interest rate risk held by investors, the ATI acts through the same channels as the Fed’s quantitative easing programs.”
In FT Alphaville last year, Miran co-wrote an article warning against the perils of a two-speed bond marketwhich would “undermine the ability of Treasury bonds to serve as risk-free collateral to support the global financial system” and bring to the United States the chaos of a defaulting emerging economy.
Miran also criticized Powell for calling for more aggressive fiscal and monetary stimulus in October 2020, about a month before that year’s election, to aid economic recovery amid the Covid-19 pandemic. .
“Powell was wrong politically and economically when he urged Congress to “go big” on fiscal stimulus in October 2020, on the eve of a presidential election, suggesting that voters preferred the $3 trillion proposals of Democrats’ dollars to the Republicans’ $500 billion,” Miran wrote. the X in September. “We know what happened next.”
Miran must be confirmed by the US Senate.
Last month, Trump named Kevin Hassett chairman of the National Economic Council.
