The Fed’s newest governor brings a Trump perspective on the economy. Is anyone buying it?

The Federal Reserve’s newest policymaker has an unconventional perspective on the US economy that’s proving tough to sell.

In September, President Donald Trump appointed Stephen Miran, one of his top economic advisers, to temporarily fill a vacated seat on the Fed’s powerful Board of Governors. So far, Miran has participated in two Fed meetings — and broken ranks with the vast majority of Fed officials each time.

At the central bank’s October policy meeting, Miran dissented from Fed officials’ decision to lower interest rates by a quarter point, backing a larger, half-point cut instead, just as he did in September.

He hasn’t wasted any time to leave a first impression in other ways, too.

In his first month as a central banker, Miran spoke publicly about the US economy at more than a dozen events and media interviews. Fed officials typically do only about a handful of public engagements in their first month.

Like Trump, Miran has repeatedly called for aggressive interest rate cuts. He has argued that borrowing costs are exerting more pressure on the economy than most think and that there’s “substantial disinflation” coming down the pike — views Miran proclaims as “out of consensus.”

He reiterated his stance in a Wednesday interview with Yahoo Finance.

Not everyone is sold on Miran’s takes on the economy.

“I certainly wouldn’t characterize anything that he’s saying as ridiculous,” David Seif, chief economist for developed markets at Nomura, said in an interview with CNN after he moderated a discussion with Miran in Washington, DC. “It’s more of a debate on the inputs that he’s putting into his economic modeling, which are controversial.”

“I think only time will tell if he ends up being right,” Seif said.

Miran’s takes

Miran’s rationale for significant rate cuts is mostly based on how he views Trump’s sweeping economic policies and his expectation that Trump’s tariffs won’t stoke inflation.

In his first big speech after being sworn in as a Fed governor, Miran explained how Trump’s policies may be contributing to a lower “neutral rate of interest,” which is a theoretical level of borrowing costs that neither stimulates nor dampens the US economy.

Miran specifically pointed to the administration’s aggressive crackdown on immigration, the president’s signature tax and spending bill passed by Congress earlier this year, and Trump’s widespread tariffs.

In Miran’s view, that means the Fed has a lot of catching up to do to bring rates back to a more neutral level, and he believes time is of the essence.

“If you keep policy this tight for a long period of time, then you run the risk that monetary policy itself is inducing a recession,” he told The New York Times in an interview that published on November 1. “I don’t see a reason to run that risk if I’m not concerned about inflation on the upside.”

Additionally, Miran has said the ongoing mass deportations should take some pressure off the housing market, further lowering rates and resulting in “substantial disinflation.” He has also frequently downplayed the potential impacts of tariffs on consumer prices.

Some pushback

Miran, who earned a PhD in economics from Harvard University, is still widely seen as a serious economist, but his ideas have had some pushback.

Former Treasury Secretary Larry Summers was critical last month of Miran’s debut speech as a Fed governor.

“I cannot remember an analytically weaker speech given before the New York Economic Club or given by a Fed governor,” Summers told Bloomberg. “If this was the best case for the radical reduction in interest rates that President Trump has been advocating, then that case is even weaker than I had previously supposed.”

Some Wall Street economists also haven’t been impressed by Miran’s takes.

“We find some of his arguments questionable, others incomplete and almost none persuasive,”Michael Feroli, chief US economist at JPMorgan, wrote in a note to clients in late September.

Miran’s distinct economic reasoning also doesn’t seem to have gained traction with his colleagues on the Fed’s rate-setting committee.

Like other Trump appointees, such as Fed governors Christopher Waller and Michelle Bowman, Miran agrees that a weaker labor market is at risk of falling off a cliff. But neither Waller nor Bowman have voted for a half-point rate cut, nor have they suggested that the neutral rate is lower than widely understood.

Fed Governor Lisa Cook, in her first speech since Trump said he fired her, was asked last week how she views the interaction between lower immigration and housing inflation, which is a cornerstone of Miran’s economic views.

She subtly rejected that premise, stating “when I’m thinking about immigration, I’m typically thinking about the labor market.”

“I think that that’s the major role that I see in immigration policy,” she said.