President Donald Trump has nominated University of Minnesota professor Christopher Phelan to be the chairman of the White House’s Council of Economic Advisers, the White House said on April 21.
His appointment is subject to confirmation from the Senate. If confirmed, Phelan would succeed Stephen Miran, who resigned in January after Trump appointed him to the Federal Reserve Board of Governors.
Phelan previously served as a senior economist in the research division of the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis and earned a doctorate in economics from the University of Chicago, according to his university website profile.
“President Trump has assembled the best and most experienced economic team in modern history,” White House spokesman Kush Desai said in a statement to multiple news outlets.
Desai said that Pierre Yared, who took over as acting chairman of the economic council after Miran moved to the Federal Reserve, will return to his professorship at Columbia University’s business school.
The Council of Economic Advisers, an agency within the president’s executive office, is tasked with providing the president with economic advice on both domestic and international economic policy. According to the White House, the council’s recommendations and analysis are grounded in economic research and empirical evidence.
Miran’s resignation followed a pledge he made during his confirmation for the Fed position, in which he promised to leave the council if he stayed beyond the end of his term on the board.
Miran previously worked as a senior strategist at Hudson Bay Capital Management and a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute for Policy Research. He also served as a senior adviser for the Treasury Department during Trump’s first term.
In late January, Trump also nominated former Fed board member Kevin Warsh to be the next chairman of the U.S. central bank.
Warsh worked as special assistant to the president for economic policy during the Bush administration, from 2002 to 2006. He was also the executive secretary of the National Economic Council.
During his hearing with the Senate Banking Committee on April 21, Warsh said the Federal Reserve needs significant changes to restore its credibility and ensure that it can live up to its dual mandate of price stability and the labor market.
“Once you let inflation take hold in the economy, it’s more expensive and harder to bring it down, and so the fatal policy error going back four or five years is still a legacy that we’re dealing with,” he said. “I think that means a regime change in the conduct of policy. I think that means a different, new inflation framework.”
Andrew Moran and The Associated Press contributed to this report.
This article was originally published by The Epoch Times.
