07:35 AM EDT, 09/16/2025 (MT Newswires) -- US equity futures were trending higher on Tuesday after the Senate confirmed President Donald Trump's nominee Stephen Miran to join the Federal Reserve's board of governors, just ahead of the central bank's two-day monetary policy meeting.

The S&P 500 rose 0.2% and the Nasdaq added 0.3% in premarket activity, while the Dow Jones Industrial Average was slightly in the green. The indexes finished Monday's trading session higher, with the Nasdaq notching an all-time closing high for a sixth consecutive session.

In August, Trump said he picked Miran, chair of the Council of Economic Advisors, to join the Fed's board and replace former Governor Adriana Kugler, who resigned in the same month. The Senate on Monday voted 48-47 to confirm Miran, according to media reports.

The Fed's monetary policy committee is scheduled to kick off its meeting on interest rates today, with a decision due tomorrow. Markets are widely expecting the Federal Open Market Committee to lower its benchmark lending rate by 25 basis points, according to the CME FedWatch tool.

Morgan Stanley expects the FOMC to cut interest rates consecutively until January, saying this week's post-meeting policy guidance will likely signal an easing bias amid worries about the labor market. Separately, Wells Fargo Investment Institute said that Fed officials are not committed to a single course of action.

US Treasury yields were mixed in premarket action, with the two-year rate retreating 0.5 basis points to 3.53% and the 10-year rate rising 0.7 basis points to 4.04%.

In a social media post on Monday, Trump said the trade meeting between the US and China went "very well" and that he will speak with his Chinese counterpart, Xi Jinping, on Friday. "A deal was also reached on a 'certain' company that young people in our country very much wanted to save," Trump wrote, potentially referring to short-video app TikTok.

US and Chinese officials have reached a framework to switch TikTok to US-controlled ownership that will be confirmed during the upcoming Trump-Xi call, Reuters reported.

On Tuesday's economic calendar, the retail sales and the import and export prices reports, both for August, are out at 8:30 am ET, followed by the industrial production report for the same month at 9:15 am. The housing market index for September posts at 10 am.

Shares of Alphabet (GOOG, GOOGL) increased 1.1% pre-bell after the technology giant's Google ( GOOG ) said it will invest 5 billion British pounds ($6.82 billion) in the UK over the next two years to support artificial intelligence developments.

The New York Times ( NYT ) ticked down 0.3% after Trump said he filed a $15 billion defamation and libel lawsuit against the news organization. Uber Technologies ( UBER ) added 0.6% after closing Monday's session up 3.1%.

Ferguson Enterprises ( FERG ) is scheduled to report its latest financial results before the bell.

West Texas Intermediate crude oil slipped 0.1% to $63.27 a barrel before the opening bell. Gold advanced 0.4% to $3,733 per troy ounce, while bitcoin nudged up 0.1% to $115,470.