Trump Names His Next Chief Economist. Who Is Christopher Phelan?

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories.President Donald Trump has named Christopher Phelan as his next chief economist, an increasingly important role as the White House focuses on affordability and employment ahead of the midterm elections.Assuming he is confirmed, Phelan will become chairman of the White House Council of Economic Advisers, counseling the president on economic matters. He will replace acting CEA Chief Pierre Yared.Yared is standing in for Stephen Miran, who left the CEA in September when Trump appointed him to fill a vacancy on the Federal Reserve Board.“Miran was an ideological ally,” says Jacob Bastian, a senior economist at CEA during the Biden administration and an assistant professor of economics at Rutgers University.

“We have less reason to think Phelan is going to be more ideological. It looks like he might be more of a technocratic type.”In choosing Phelan, Bastian says the administration may have been trying to “signal seriousness.”White House Spokesman Kush Desai says “Phelan is an eminently qualified pick to run the CEA and build on the tremendous legacy of Miran and Yared.”Phelan is an economics professor at the University of Minnesota and a consultant to the Federal Reserve of Minneapolis, where he has worked since 1998.

He attended the University of Chicago in the late 1980s, graduating with masters and doctorate degrees from its school of economics. While at the university, Phelan was a fellow at the conservative Bradley Foundation and at the Earhart Foundation, a now-closed nonprofit organization that backed libertarian and conservative academics.His most recent academic work relates to how reputational concerns impact the monetary policy of central banks and how current account deficits