Federal Reserve Governor Stephen Miran told CNBC on Friday that he spoke only briefly to President Trump before this week’s interest rate decision and was not pressured on how to vote.
Miran, who voted against the quarter percentage point reduction in favor of a move twice that size, said he made his decision independently.
“He called me Tuesday morning to congratulate me, and that was it,” the central banker said during a “Squawk on the Street” interview. “I did not talk to him about how I vote. I did not talk to him about about my dots in the [Summary] of Economic Projections.”
Not only did Miran vote against the quarter-point move but also his “dot” for where he sees the fed funds rate at the end of this year was well below the rest of the 19 participants at the Federal Open Market Committee meeting. He also views rates being lower than most of the other officials.
Questions over Fed independence have intensified since Trump took office for his second term in January.
The president has been pushing hard for the Fed to lower interest rates aggressively, openly name-calling Chair Jerome Powell, whom he has nicknamed “Too Late.” In previous administrations, pressure on the Fed generally was done in a more discrete manner.
Also, Trump has sought to oust Governor Lisa Cook, and has said he would litmus-test Powell’s replacement next year for a willingness to ease monetary policy.
Along those lines, questions have arisen about potential conflicts for Miran taking a leave as head of the Council of Economic Advisers, rather than resigning. However, he called those concerns “a bit silly” as he only intends to stay at the Fed until the unexpired term he is filling ends in January 2026.
“If the President told me that I was going to stay in the seat past January, I would just resign immediately. You know, there’d be no there’d be no question about it,” he said. “The fact that people are saying this is, you know, that’s a motivator in terms of wanting to get my full views out there on Monday and walk through [them] in meticulous detail, because I do feel that I owe the world in accounting for why my views are so different.
Miran speaks Monday to the Economic Club of New York, a prime platform for leaders in the business and political world where Trump also has spoken.
Despite the controversial circumstances surrounding his appointment, Miran said the atmosphere at the meeting was collegial, including his interactions with Cook.
“Everybody was extremely welcoming and extremely kind and extremely cordial,” he said. “Iit was a very collegial environment, and I really appreciated that. And that includes Governor Cook.”
Earlier in the day, Minneapolis Fed President Neel Kashkari offered a similar business-as-usual description of the atmosphere surrounding Miran’s arrival to the FOMC.
“This was like any other transition, where somebody comes in and everybody says, ‘Hey, welcome to the table,'” Kashkari said. “Then everybody went about their business as normal.”
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