Trump names Treasury adviser from first term to chair economic panel

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Donald Trump has tapped Stephen Miran, an economist who served in his first term, to chair his Council of Economic Advisers.

With the nomination, the president-elect is seeking to be promoted to the White House economic post, not only a critic of Federal Reserve Chair Jay Powell, but also one who has accused the Biden administration of manipulating the economy and “usurping” the central bank’s role.

“Steve will work with the rest of my economic team to deliver a tremendous economic boom that will excite all Americans,” Trump said in a statement Sunday.

Miran was the Treasury Department’s senior economic policy adviser in the first Trump administration.

Currently a senior strategist at hedge fund Hudson’s Bay Capital Management, he said he was honored. “I look forward to working to help 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.

On his first day in office, Trump threatened U.S. trading partners with planned tariffs, including 25 percent on goods from Mexico and Canada and 10 percent on Chinese imports.

On the campaign trail, Trump promised to impose a 20 percent blanket tariff on all U.S. imports, as well as a 60 percent tariff on goods from China, suggesting his second term policies could be more protectionist and disruptive to the global economy. Market compared to its first.

The president-elect has promised to renew tax cuts during his first spell in the White House.

Earlier this year, Miran co-wrote a paper indicting Biden’s Treasury Department Manipulation of the economy during electionsArguing the government’s reliance on short-term debt “stealth hinders the Fed’s ability to fight quantitative easing and inflation.

“By adjusting its debt maturity profile, the Treasury is dynamically managing financial conditions and, through them, usurping key functions of the economy, the Federal Reserve,” he wrote with economist Nouriel Roubini.

“We dub this innovative tool ‘Activist Treasury Assurance’ or ATI. By manipulating the amount of interest rate risk owned by investors, ATI operates through the same channels as the Fed’s quantitative easing programs.”

In FT Alphaville last year, Miran co-authored a piece warning against The dangers of a two-tier bond marketThat would “undermine the ability of Treasuries to serve as risk-free collateral underpinning the global financial system” and a default in the US would wreak havoc on emerging economies.

Miran also hit out at Powell for calling for more aggressive fiscal and monetary stimulus in October 2020, about a month before that year’s elections, to help the economic recovery amid the Covid-19 pandemic.

“Powell was politically and economically wrong when he called on Congress to ‘go big’ on fiscal stimulus in October 2020, on the eve of a presidential election, suggesting that voters support the Democrats’ $3 trillion proposal over the Republicans’ $500 billion,” Miran wrote in the September X- A. “We know what happened next.”

Miran must be confirmed by the US Senate.

Last month, Trump nominated Kevin Hassett to chair the National Economic Council.