Now, Miran leads the agency tasked with providing the executive branch with economic research and analysis. The National Economic Council, headed by Kevin Hassett, helps coordinate policy.
“Administration officials maintain regular contact with business leaders and industry groups about our trade and economic policies,” White House spokesman Kush Desai said in a statement. “The only interest guiding the administration and President Trump’s decision-making, however, is the best interest of the American people.”
The Council of Economic Advisers did not immediately respond to Fortune’s request for comment.
Markets currently seem to be experiencing a period of uneasy calm, with the S&P 500 up over 10% from April 8, when the index plunged below the $5,000 mark for the first time in nearly 12 months.
That’s because his vision largely depends on how tariffs theoretically make the dollar stronger relative to foreign currencies. When imports from China become more expensive, for example, less demand for the country’s goods means the value of the yuan compared with the dollar should decline.
“American consumers’ purchasing power isn’t affected, since the tariff and the currency move cancel each other out,” Miran wrote in his memo, “but since the exporters’ citizens became poorer as a result of the currency move, the exporting nation ‘pays for’ or bears the burden of the tax, while the U.S. Treasury collects the revenue.”
“If currency offset does not occur,” Miran wrote in November, “American consumers will suffer higher prices, and the tariff will be borne by them.”
“Economists are rooting for the penguins of the Heard and [McDonald] Islands,” Paul Donovan, chief economist at UBS Global Wealth Management, wrote in a note Wednesday, referencing the uninhabited Antarctic territory assigned a baseline 10% tariff.
Michael Green, portfolio manager and chief strategist of ETF manager Simplify, disputed that characterization, but that doesn’t mean he thinks such proposals make for practical policy.
“They are nice pontifications about what could potentially happen if the U.S. is able to somewhat unilaterally negotiate positions,” he told Fortune.
“What we are seeing in the tariff responses is at least the initial conditions for that are not met,” added Green, who previously founded a hedge fund seeded by George Soros and managed the personal capital of Peter Thiel. “The rest of the world’s like, ‘Why? Why would we do that?’”
“If other nations want to benefit from the U.S. geopolitical and financial umbrella, then they need to pull their weight,” he said, “and pay their fair share.”
Countries could do that, he said, by passively accepting tariffs, committing to buy more U.S. exports, boosting their investment in American infrastructure, and ending “unfair trade practices.”
“Fifth,” Miran said, “they could simply write checks to Treasury that help us finance global public goods.”
If Wall Street bigwigs got a similar spiel last week, some apparently left the White House less than convinced.
