Oren Cass is an American writer and policy thinker best known for challenging the free-market consensus that dominated the Republican Party and mainstream conservatism in the late twentieth century. Trained in law and business, he first gained prominence as a policy adviser to Mitt Romney's 2012 presidential campaign and later as a fellow at the Manhattan Institute, before founding the think tank American Compass, which he leads. His central project is a reformulation of conservative economics that treats the health of workers, families, and communities—rather than aggregate consumption, GDP growth, or cheap consumer goods—as the proper measure of economic success.
Cass argues that decades of policy oriented toward efficiency, globalization, and free trade hollowed out American manufacturing and destabilized the working and middle classes, particularly men without college degrees. He is associated with a revival of interest in industrial policy, tariffs, and a more active governmental role in shaping markets, positions that break sharply with the libertarian-leaning wing of the right. He has emphasized the dignity of work and the labor market as a social institution, contending that a functioning economy should allow a typical worker to support a family. This has led him to unusual-for-conservatives positions, including openness to reformed labor organizations and skepticism of unrestricted immigration and offshoring.
Intellectually, Cass draws on and helped articulate what is often called the "national conservative" or post-liberal turn on the American right, though he tends to frame his arguments in pragmatic, empirical terms rather than culture-war rhetoric. He positions himself against both the pre-Trump Republican economic establishment and progressive redistribution, seeking a distinct conservative political economy centered on production and family formation. His work has been influential in giving intellectual structure to the populist economic instincts that surfaced during and after Donald Trump's rise, providing arguments for policymakers and commentators seeking an alternative to Reagan-era orthodoxy.
Cass's critics, including free-market economists and traditional conservatives, argue that his prescriptions risk reviving discredited protectionism and expanding state intervention in ways that could reduce prosperity. Supporters credit him with forcing a serious rethinking of assumptions that had long gone unquestioned on the right. Either way, he has become a significant figure in the contemporary debate over what conservative economics should be, helping to shift the terms of that argument.