Stephen Miran, chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers and US Federal Reserve governor nominee for US President Donald Trump, throughout a Senate Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs Committee affirmation listening to in Washington, DC, US, on Thursday, Sept. 4, 2025.
Daniel Heuer | Bloomberg | Getty Images
President Donald Trump’s pick to affix the Federal Reserve, Stephen Miran, cleared a key procedural hurdle within the Senate on Monday, teeing up a remaining affirmation vote later within the night.
Miran is on monitor to be confirmed to the Fed’s Board of Governors simply at some point before the central financial institution meets to contemplate chopping rates of interest.
Miran has stated that if he’s confirmed, he plans to take an unpaid leave of absence from his job as chair of the White House’s Council of Economic Advisors, however cease in need of giving up the place.
That prospect has additional infected considerations amongst Democrats and a few economists that the Fed’s independence is below menace if a White House appointee working for the president concurrently serves as an “independent” governor of the central financial institution.
These new considerations are on prime of longstanding fears sparked by Trump’s naked knuckle strain campaigns to get the central financial institution to slash borrowing prices by any means.
Markets are expecting the central financial institution to announce a price lower this week for the primary time since December 2024, however questions stay over how deep a lower may be.
Fed Chair Jerome Powell has to date resisted the president’s strain marketing campaign. But he signaled last month that financial circumstances — together with uncertainty attributable to tariffs — might warrant price cuts on the September meeting.
If Miran participates within the two-day Fed meeting beginning Tuesday, he would possible not be a decisive vote on price cuts. At its last meeting in late July, members of the Federal Open Market Committee voted 9-2 to maintain charges regular.
But critics say Miran may attempt to affect the committee, and so they warn that his presence undermines the central financial institution’s independence from the White House.
“One day of serving as the President’s chief economist and a supposedly independent Governor at the Fed would be one day too many,” Senate Banking Committee Ranking Member Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., stated before Miran made it by her committee on a party-line vote final week.
Trump picked Miran to fill the seat vacated by former Governor Adriana Kugler, who abruptly introduced her resignation in August.
Miran would serve till Jan. 31, the date when Kugler’s time period was set to run out.
“The term for which I’ve been nominated is four and a half months. If I am nominated and confirmed for a longer term than just a handful of months, I would absolutely resign” from the White House, Miran stated at his affirmation listening to.
Miran’s fast-tracked affirmation vote comes as Trump can be making an attempt to fireplace Fed Governor Lisa Cook from the central financial institution, citing allegations of mortgage fraud put ahead by his administration.
Cook, the primary Black lady to function a Fed governor, has denied the allegations and sued to dam her removing.
A decide final week blocked Trump from firing Cook because the lawsuit over her termination performs out. Trump has requested a federal appeals court docket to pause that lower-court ruling before Tuesday’s Fed meeting.
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