Stephen Miran confirmed to Fed board

• Forward look: Miran is expected to take part in the Fed's rate setting committee meeting. 
• Key insight: Miran breaks years of precedent by becoming the first Fed official to also retain his White House position. 
• What's at stake: The Fed will decide this week whether to cut interest rates, and Miran will likely be a voice in favor of steeper cuts due to his advocacy of the Trump administration's tariff policy. 
  

WASHINGTON — The Senate has confirmed Stephen Miran to the Federal Reserve Board, placing one of President Donald Trump's most loyal economists on one of the most influential seats in global finance. 
The Senate voted mostly along party lines 48-47 to confirm his nomination. Sen. Lisa Murkowski, a Republican from Alaska, broke ranks to vote against Miran. 

Miran's confirmation means he will join the central bank while continuing to hold a White House appointment at the same time. It's a significant break of precedent and one that Congressional Democrats said amounted to an open disregard for the Fed's political independence. 

Miran — one of the chief architects of the Trump administration's trade policy — said repeatedly during his confirmation hearing that White House attorneys determined that he could take an unpaid leave of absence from his position as chair of the Council of Economic Advisers. Nonetheless, he said he would likely resign if he were appointed to a longer term than the several month stint he's been nominated to serve. 

"I have received advice from counsel that what is required is an unpaid leave of office," Miran said in response to a question from Sen. Jack Reed, D-R.I. "The term being nominated is a little more than 4 months. As long as that is the advice of counsel, I will follow the law." 

Miran's nomination already comes amid big questions about the independence of the Fed, and on how and whether Miran would operate as a close ally of Trump. His position on the CEA is an additional wrinkle in his nomination, but not a significant obstacle. Miran's nomination needed only a simple majority to pass, and Republicans hold 53 seats in the Senate. 

"You're going to be an employee of the president of the United States on leave … that is absolutely ridiculous," Reed said.

The term Miran is nominated to fill — formerly held by Adriana Kugler, who resigned unexpectedly in August — expires in January. The law allows Miran to remain on the board, however, until a new member is confirmed by the Senate. 

His role on the Fed board and his presumed return to the CEA, the powerful economic advisory board at the White House, is in direct conflict with one of Miran's most public arguments about the Fed. In a Manhattan Institute paper last year, Miran said that Fed officials should be barred from serving in the executive branch for four years after the conclusion of their Fed experience. 

Miran's confirmation means that he is expected to take part in the next Federal Open Market Committee meeting, which is slated to begin Tuesday. FOMC members, including Fed Chair Jerome Powell, have hinted that interest rate cuts are on the table for the September meeting, spurred by signs of a deteriorating  labor market. Fed Chairman Jerome Powell and other FOMC members have held interest rates steady since January out of concern that the president's tariff regime and immigration policies could drive up inflation while also putting pressure on the labor market, and have waited to see which of those opposing pressures emerge as the more urgent concern. 

Miran has promised to act independently on monetary policy, although he would still listen to the advice of Trump, a statement that many Democratic members of the Senate Banking Committee questioned given his decision to remain a White House official. 

"If I'm confirmed to this role, I will act … based on my own personal analysis of economic data, my own personal analysis of the effects of economic policies on the economy, and act based on my judgement of the best economic policy possible,"  he said. "That said, I'm always happy to hear views from every source possible. It's important to me to hear a variety of views to make sure that I really do think that."

On bank policy, however, Miran has made no such promise. 

"Do you think the Federal Reserve Board and reserve banks have been independent from politics in the last several years?" Sen. Cynthia Lummis, R-Wyo., asked during Miran's hearing. 

"I don't believe that it was a set of non-partisan, non-political objective technocrats that decided … that the Federal Reserve should be a solution to face climate change," Miran answered. "I don't believe that operation choke point was a non-political act, either. And so if confirmed [to] Federal Reserve, I intend to fully respect independence, respect the monetary policy, as you say. On regulatory work, there's a lot of work to be done, and I applaud the work this committee has done on operation choke points and other matters that you mentioned."