Washington (AFP) – The US Senate is due to vote late Monday on the confirmation of President Donald Trump’s choice to join the Federal Reserve’s board, as the clock ticks down to a key policy meeting. If confirmed, Stephen Miran, who chairs the White House Council of Economic Advisers (CEA), would join the Fed as one of 12 voting members on a panel that sets interest rates steering the world’s biggest economy. Policymakers on the rate-setting Federal Open Market Committee are due to begin their next two-day meeting on Tuesday morning.
The swift moves to confirm Miran come as Trump has intensified pressure on the independent central bank to slash interest rates, often citing benign inflation figures in doing so. The president has taken other actions that critics worry would threaten the bank’s independence from politics. Besides naming White House economist Miran to fill a vacancy on the Fed’s board when Fed Governor Adriana Kugler resigned early in August, Trump moved to fire another governor, Lisa Cook, in the same month over mortgage fraud allegations. A federal judge has temporarily blocked the ouster of Cook—the first Black woman to serve on the Fed’s board of governors—as her legal challenge against Trump plays out. This means she is likely to remain in the FOMC’s meeting this week unless Trump succeeds in appealing this ruling. However, the eventual outcome of her lawsuit could have broader implications for the Fed.
The Fed is widely expected to lower the benchmark lending rate by 25 basis points on Wednesday, to a range between 4.0 percent and 4.25 percent. Trump on Monday reiterated his call for a major interest rate cut, writing on his Truth Social platform that Fed Chair Jerome Powell “must cut interest rates, now, and bigger than he had in mind.” All eyes will be on Powell’s remarks after the rate decision is unveiled Wednesday afternoon for hints on the pace and size of further reductions to come.
For now, Miran looks poised to clear a confirmation vote by the Republican-majority Senate, despite Democratic lawmakers raising concerns over his White House ties. Their main worries include Miran’s plan to take a leave of absence from the CEA rather than resign—a decision he attributed to his short tenure of just over four months if confirmed to replace Kugler for the remainder of her term. Miran holds a PhD in economics from Harvard University and served as a senior advisor in the Treasury Department during Trump’s first presidency. He later joined conservative think-tank the Manhattan Institute, where he wrote commentaries on issues including calls for Fed reform.
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