Miran says he doesn’t see tariffs causing inflation, putting him in minority on Fed committee

Federal Reserve Governor Stephen Miran said Friday that he doesn’t anticipate President Donald Trump’s tariffs will have an inflationary effect on the U.S. economy.

“I’m clearly in the minority in not being concerned about inflation from tariffs,” he said on CNBC’s “Money Movers.” “But that was also true in 2018-2019, and I think I probably could take a little victory lap about that.”

“There will always be relative price changes, but whether or not it’s inflation that’s macroeconomically significant of the type that monetary policy should respond to is a different question,” he added.

His comments come after the Fed governor was the lone dissenter among 12 Federal Open Market Committee voters from the central bank’s decision Wednesday to slash its benchmark overnight lending rate by a quarter-percentage point, instead calling for a half-point reduction.

When explaining the reason for his decision, Miran said he doesn’t “see any material inflation from tariffs.”

“I see no evidence that it’s occurred,” the policymaker said, pointing to the lack of difference in inflation rates between import-intensive core goods and overall core goods. “If you thought tariffs are driving inflation higher, you’d think imports would be differentially inflating at a higher pace.”

Miran additionally cited “no discernible trend difference” between U.S. core goods inflation and that in other countries. “If I thought that tariffs were driving any material inflation in the United States, I’d look for evidence,” he continued.

However, most measures show inflation running above the Fed’s 2% target this year, and the full committee’s forecast indicated it won’t come back to that level until 2028.

In the second half of the year, Miran expects growth to come in stronger, as he said economic headwinds such as uncertainty around Trump’s trade and tax policies caused growth in the first half to be weaker than he had hoped. He also believes Trump’s immigration policies will bring about disinflation in the economy.

“If you add millions of new immigrants into a country in a short period of time, it’s going to drive shelter prices up,” he said. “If you close that border, and then you have negative debt migration … that’s going to have a very disinflationary effect.”

The Senate confirmed Miran to the Fed Board of Governors on Monday, a day before this week’s policy meeting began. He had been picked by President Donald Trump in August to fill former Governor Adriana Kugler’s seat following her abrupt resignation.

Miran is set to serve on the board for the remainder of Kugler’s term, which expires on Jan. 31, 2026. He said during a confirmation hearing earlier this month that he will take an unpaid leave of absence from his position as chair of the White House Council of Economic Advisors while serving out the term rather than resign entirely.