U.S. Treasury yields edged higher in late day trading Thursday after President Donald Trump said he will nominate Stephen Miran, chair of the Council of Economic Advisors, to serve on the Federal Reserve Board of Governors, replacing Adriana Kugler, who resigned last Friday.
The nominee will serve out Kugler’s term, which expires Jan. 31, 2026. “In the meantime, we will continue to search for a permanent replacement,” Trump said in a social media post, indicating that Miran only serves in a caretaker role.
Miran’s appointment comes amid continuing speculation that Trump would seek to nominate a “shadow chair” whose job it would be mainly to act as a gadfly on the board. The president has been pushing for sharply lower interest rates.
Miran is a past critic of the Fed, specifically its aggressive stimulus actions during the Covid crisis.
Investors also continued to weigh the impact on the economy of President Trump’s “reciprocal” tariffs that went in to effect overnight.
The 10-year yield was higher by 1.6 basis points to 4.246% while the 30-year Treasury bond yield also rose 1.6 basis points to yield 4.828%. The 2-year Treasury yield was up almost 2 basis points to 3.720%.
One basis point equals 0.01% and yields and prices move in opposite directions.
Earlier in the day, investors were watching as Trump’s “reciprocal” tariffs against dozens of trade partners went into effect Thursday.
“IT’S MIDNIGHT!!! BILLIONS OF DOLLARS IN TARIFFS ARE NOW FLOWING INTO THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA!” Trump wrote on social media platform Truth Social.
In an earlier post, Trump said the tariffs were targeting “COUNTRIES THAT HAVE TAKEN ADVANTAGE OF THE UNITED STATES FOR MANY YEARS.”
Trump recently rejiggered the tariff rates ahead of the deadline, imposing steep duties of 50% on both Brazil and India.
Yields also reacted as steady weekly jobless claims suggested that the U.S. economy was holding up. Claims for the week ended Aug. 2 came in at 226,000, while economists polled by Dow Jones had called for 221,000.
— With additional reporting by CNBC reporter Jeff Cox
