Top Trump economist derided as 'incoherent' on tariffs after closed-door meeting with investors

Source: Fortune

Top Trump economist derided as ‘incoherent’ on tariffs after closed-door meeting with investors

Greg McKenna
Thu, May 1, 2025 at 7:07 AM EDT 6 min read

• Stephen Miran, who heads the president’s Council of Economic Advisers, reportedly failed to reassure bond investors about the president’s tariff plans. In a memo authored shortly after President Donald Trump’s election victory, Miran said a stronger dollar was key to making other nations bear the burden of tax hikes on imports. The greenback, however, is down roughly 8% year to date.

The Trump administration has clear incentive to smooth things over with bond investors, who may have forced the president to back off his sweeping “reciprocal tariffs” earlier this month. But one of Trump’s top economists, who authored a tariff blueprint read widely on Wall Street, reportedly failed to reassure several leading fixed-income traders in a meeting at the White House last week.

Stephen Miran, chair of the Council of Economic Advisers, met with roughly 15 representatives from the likes of Citadel, BlackRock, and PGIM on Friday at an event convened by Citigroup, the Financial Times reported. Apparently, some participants thought it didn’t go well, with sources branding Miran’s comments on tariffs “incoherent” and the Harvard-educated economist “out of his depth” in comments to the FT.

“[Miran] got questions, and that’s when it fell apart,” one person familiar with the meeting told the FT. “When you’re with an audience that knows a lot, the talking points are taken apart pretty quickly.”

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Read more: https://finance.yahoo.com/news/top-trump-economist-derided-incoherent-110700105.html