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Donald Trump’s top economic adviser Stephen Miran struggled to reassure leading bond investors in a meeting last week that followed a bout of intense tumult on Wall Street triggered by the president’s tariffs.
Miran, chair of the Council of Economic Advisers, met representatives from top hedge funds and other major investors at the White House’s Eisenhower Executive Office building on Friday, said people with direct knowledge of the matter.
Some participants found Friday’s meeting counter-productive, with two people describing Miran’s comments around tariffs and markets as “incoherent” or incomplete, and one of them saying Miran was “out of his depth”.
“[Miran] got questions and that’s when it fell apart,” said one person familiar with the meeting. “When you’re with an audience that knows a lot, the talking points are taken apart pretty quickly.”
Another person familiar with the meeting was more encouraged by the administration’s approach to deregulation and tax cuts.
The roughly 15 attendees included representatives of hedge funds Balyasny, Tudor and Citadel, as well as asset managers PGIM and BlackRock. The event, convened by Citigroup, was timed to coincide with the IMF’s spring meeting.
“Administration officials maintain regular contact with business leaders and industry groups about our trade and economic policies. The only interest guiding the administration and President Trump’s decision-making, however, is the best interest of the American people,” the White House said when asked about the meeting.
Citi, BlackRock, PGIM, Balyasny, Citadel and Tudor declined to comment.
Trump’s policies have triggered intense volatility in US equity and debt markets. US government bonds sold off sharply after the president’s April 2 announcement of steep “reciprocal” tariffs. They stabilised after he paused the levies for 90 days, but many investors remain on edge.
The US 10-year Treasury yield traded at 4.17 per cent on Tuesday, down from a high of 4.59 per cent on April 11. Yields move inversely to prices.
Treasury secretary Scott Bessent also addressed investors at a closed-door meeting last week. Bessent’s comments indicating he expected the US and China to reach a trade deal in the “very near future” helped lift US stocks.
But attendees of the meeting with Miran said he did little to assuage the participants about the tumult in markets and maintained the administration’s line that tariffs would hurt the US’s trading partners more than American consumers. Miran also stated the primary aim of tariffs was not to generate revenue, though additional revenue could be a benefit.
The Council of Economic Advisers was established after the second world war to provide advice on domestic and international economic policy to the president. However, the National Economic Council is responsible for co-ordinating policy.
Before joining the administration, Miran wrote about the merits of a so-called Mar-a-Lago Accord to align global markets more firmly around US interests in trade and geopolitics.
Elements of his thinking, pinned on the notion that the US dollar’s dominant reserve currency status represents a “burden”, were outlined in a widely read note in November. They include weakening the dollar and tying holders of US government bonds in to arrangements to fund defence spending, in return for an American security guarantee.
Early this month, Miran delivered a speech at the Hudson Institute think-tank that did not specifically call for a new global currency pact, but did say currency markets were “distorted” and there were “unfortunate side effects of providing reserve assets”.
Among his solutions were that countries should accept tariffs on exports to the US without retaliation, or simply “write cheques to Treasury that help us finance global public goods”.
Bond investors have balked both at this and at the rollout of Trump’s tariffs. Sinking long-term bond prices and a falling dollar suggest the US’s role as a market haven is under strain, investors say.
One person familiar with the situation said Miran had been increasingly distancing himself from the ideas in the 2024 paper in recent meetings with investors.
“He is in full-scale retreat,” said the person familiar with the matter.
Additional reporting by James Politi
