Who is Stephen Miran, the US economist behind Trump tariff shockwaves?

US President Donald Trump on Wednesday announced that he had authorised a 90-day pause and a lowered reciprocal tariff of 10 per cent during the three months of truce amid trade wars-induced market meltdown.

President Trump, however, announced that the US had hiked China tariffs to 125 per cent. ‘No other president would have done what I did. Somebody had to do it.’ Trump justified his tariff policies to reporters on Wednesday, US time.

The announcement means a delay. The worries, however, remain. Trump's block came a day after his administration's sweeping tariffs against around five countries, including India, came into force, triggering trade disruptions and fears of a global economic recession.

Who is advising Trump on tariffs?

In December 2024, Donald Trump, then the President-elect, picked Stephen Miran as the chair of his Council of Economic Advisers (CEA).

The CEA advises the president on economic policy and comprises three members, including the chair. The council assists in preparing an annual report that gives an overview of the country's economy, reviews federal policies and programs, and makes economic policy recommendations.

Miran, a Treasury Department adviser in Trump's first administration, is often called the ‘mind’ behind Trump's economic policies, including the tariffs.

Miran has argued that fears over trade tariffs that Trump imposed and delayed for now are overblown. “Tariffs deserve some extra attention. Most economists and some investors dismiss tariffs as counterproductive at best and devastatingly harmful at worst. They’re wrong,” Miran said this Monday.

“One reason the economic consensus on tariffs is so wrong is because nearly all of the models that economists use to study international trade assume either no trade deficits at all, or assume that deficits are short-lived and quickly self-correct through currency adjustments,” he said in his remarks at Hudson Institute think tank.

According to standard models, trade deficits will cause the US dollar to weaken, which reduces imports and boosts exports, eventually wiping out the trade deficit, Miran said.

“If that happens, tariffs may be unnecessary, because trade will balance itself over time and, in this view, intervening with tariffs can only make things worse,”

Who is Stephen Miran?

Miran graduated from Boston University in 2005, studying economics, philosophy, and mathematics. He received a PhD in economics from Harvard University in 2010, where he was a student of Martin Feldstein, an eminent American economist who chaired the CEA during the US President Ronald Reagan administration in the 1980s.

Miran was a senior strategist at multi-billion dollar global investment management firm, Hudson Bay Capital Management before becoming the 32nd chair of the US CEA. Miran is also co-founder of the asset management firm Amberwave Partners, and an adjunct fellow at the Manhattan Institute.

Miran served as an advisor of economic policy for the Department of the Treasury from 2020 to 2021, during Steven Mnuchin's tenure as secretary of the Treasury.

User’s Guide

In a report published by Hudson Institute in November titled, ‘A user’s guide to restructuring the Global Trading System,’ Miran argued that the root of the economic imbalances lay in persistent dollar overvaluation that prevented the balancing of international trade.

He had mentioned several tariff scenarios that, he said then, could be applied under a second Trump administration while arguing that they could still be effective despite some potential negative impacts. That precisely seems to be happening now. 

In the essay, Miran pointed to Trump’s application of tariffs on China in 2018-2019, which he argues “passed with little discernible macroeconomic consequence,”

“The effective tariff rate on Chinese imports increased by 17.9 percentage points from the start of the trade war in 2018 to the maximum tariff rate in 2019,” Miran said in the essay.

‘Revenue is a nice side effect’

Miran said in his April 7 statement, available on the White House website, that it is important to note here that tariffs are not levied simply to collect revenues.

“For example, the President’s reciprocal tariffs are designed to address tariff and non-tariff barriers and other forms of cheating like currency manipulation, dumping, and subsidies to gain unfair advantage. Revenue is a nice side effect, and if it is used in part for lowering taxes, it can help turbo-charge competitiveness improvements that boost US exports,” he said.

Miran's demands from other nations

Miran sparked a row with his remarks at the Hudson Institute by calling for other nations to take on a greater share of costs that he claims the United States has unfairly shouldered. He emphasised the importance of "burden sharing" by other nations to counter what he termed “unfair barriers to trade.”

Miran suggested various ways of sharing the burden, such as accepting the tariffs without taking retaliatory action, purchasing more American goods, and increasing defence spending.

Some of the measures that Miran said he believed should be adopted by other nations include:

Tariff acceptance: Countries should allow the US to impose tariffs on their exports without retaliation. This, he said, would help fund American public goods.

Market access: Miran suggested that foreign governments should open their markets and purchase more US products.

Defence spending: According to Miran, allies should increase their defence budgets and buy more US-made military equipment.

Direct contributions: He also suggested that foreign governments could make financial contributions to the US Treasury to offset security and economic costs.

(With agency inputs)