Oren Cass

Cass attended a progressive charter school in suburban Massachusetts and was tutored by an attorney grandfather known for playing devil’s advocate. The first vote he cast was for Mitt Romney’s bid for governor of Massachusetts.⁠[1]

He studied political economy at Williams College as a “small-C conservative” and earned a B.A. in political economy.⁠[1][2]

After graduating, Cass joined Bain & Company as a junior consultant and worked as a management consultant in its Boston and Delhi offices from 2005 to 2015. During that period he was a junior policy analyst on Mitt Romney’s first presidential campaign.⁠[3][1]

He earned a J.D. magna cum laude from Harvard Law School, where he was vice president and treasurer of the Harvard Law Review. While in law school he served as domestic policy director of Romney’s 2012 presidential campaign, completing his final year at Harvard Law at the same time.⁠[3][1]

In the summer of 2011 he prepared a PowerPoint presentation for Romney on the importance of global markets. After Romney lost the 2012 election, Cass returned to Bain as a manager in the Boston and New Delhi offices.⁠[1]

In a 2013 article in National Review, Cass first detailed an anti-poverty plan, which Senator Marco Rubio later drew on.⁠[1]

From 2015 to 2019 Cass was a senior fellow at the conservative Manhattan Institute, where he worked on labor market policy and wrote on safety-net reform and climate policy. He published more than 15 reports there, edited its “Issues” series and testified before seven congressional committees.⁠[2][3][1]

Cass published The Once and Future Worker in 2018. The book argues that a labor market in which workers can support strong families and communities is the central determinant of a society’s prosperity; it is dedicated to his attorney grandfather.⁠[1]

Cass founded American Compass in 2020. The organization’s stated aim is to restore an economic consensus that emphasizes family, community and industry.⁠[3][2]

As of December 2023, American Compass as an organization had received at least $1 million from the Hewlett Foundation as well as funding from the Omidyar Network.⁠[1]

On August 20, 2025, Andreessen HorowitzAndreessen HorowitzAndreessen Horowitz (a16z) is a venture capital firm founded in 2009 by Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz. It invests from the seed stage through the growth stage and provides operational support to its portfolio companies.Open the full entry (a16z) released the episode “Oren Cass & Noah SmithNoah SmithNoah Smith is an American economics commentator who writes the Substack newsletter blog Noahpinion; he was previously an economics columnist for Bloomberg Opinion and an assistant professor of finance at Stony Brook University.Open the full entry Debate the True Impact of Tariffs,” in which Cass appeared with Noah Smith and a16z general partner Erik TorenbergErik TorenbergErik Torenberg is a tech entrepreneur, investor, and podcast host who is a general partner at Andreessen Horowitz (a16z), where he invests and is responsible for marketing and the ecosystem network. He was the first employee of Product Hunt and founded or co-founded On Deck, Village Global, and Turpentine, long combining founder communities, expert content, and early-stage investing.Open the full entry. Framed by the question “Do tariffs help rebuild American manufacturing or hold it back?”, the episode covers the case for tariff-driven reindustrialization versus free-market approaches, the role of allies in trade policy, and what the data show about manufacturing jobs, investment and output.⁠[4][5]

Cass describes himself as a lifelong New England conservative and cites Romney as an inspiration; he rejects what he calls “market fundamentalism” and has defended unions and industrial policy on political grounds.⁠[1]

A policy handbook from American Compass that he helped produce proposes a tariff of at least 10% on all imports until the trade deficit is eliminated, a 50% domestic content requirement for national-security products, an end to normal trade relations with China, limits on low-skill immigration, payments of $250 to $350 per child per month, limits on minors’ use of social media and clarified rights for sector-wide unions.⁠[1]

Cass edited the volume The New Conservatives: Restoring America’s Commitment to Family, Community, and Industry and is a contributing opinion writer for the Financial TimesFinancial TimesThe Financial Times (FT) is a London-based English-language business and financial news organization, known for its salmon-pink newspaper and its motto “Without Fear and Without Favour.” It was owned successively by the British Pearson group and Japan’s Nikkei Inc., and today digital subscriptions are its main source of revenue.Open the full entry and The New York Times.⁠[3]

American Compass: Official website: https://americancompass.org/ (opens in a new window).⁠[3]