A well-known economist who was believed to be trying to influence the Trump administration’s economic policies in the lead-up to the inauguration is facing criticism for his opposition to President Donald Trump’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) efforts in line with the resistance from some of his group’s top donors.
‘Elon Musk is not actually a popular person, and the frame of politics that the DOGE crew is pushing is not an effective brand of politics,’ American Compass founder and chief economist Oren Cass told Politico in February.
Also in February, Cass wrote a piece for UnHerd, titled ‘Why DOGE will fail: There isn’t an easy button for everything,’ where he argued that ‘DOGE is haphazardly cutting expenditures without even knowing what they are.’
Cass has a long history of criticizing Musk, including last year when he took shots at Musk’s personal character and said in a post on X that Musk’s values are not aligned with the interests of the American people after the tech billionaire opened a factory in China.
In March 2024, Cass posted that Musk has ‘already committed to upholding core socialist values’ to placate the Chinese Communist Party for financial gain.
Fox News Digital previously reported on Cass positioning himself as an ally of the Trump administration and that a significant chunk of American Compass’ funding comes from a handful of foundations tied to liberal causes, including almost $2 million from the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation and the Omidyar Network, which is led by a founder described as ‘notable for funding liberal-in-conservative clothing groups that target former president Donald Trump and his supporters.’
The Hewlett Foundation gave nearly $2 million, 44.1% of total funding, to American Compass from 2020-2023, including a startup grant, while Pierre Omidyar, of the Omidyar Network, gave $550,000, 11.3% of total funding, from 2020-2023.
Both the Hewlett Foundation and Omidyar Network have resisted the Trump administration.
Hewlett Foundation Director Of Economic And Society Initiative Jennifer Harris has been critical of Musk and DOGE’s efforts on X, including riposting a criticism doubting that DOGE cuts would result in actual savings and sharing a post that said, ‘The Air Crashes Of The Past Two Days Show Us The Obvious: The Man In Charge Of @DOGE Runs Companies That No One Would Miss If They Disappeared Tomorrow. If Good Government Disappears, People Die.’
The Atlantic posted a piece in February with the headline, ‘DOGE Is Failing on Its Own Terms.’ The bottom of that article stated, ‘Support for this project was provided by the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation.’
The Omidyar Network has been active behind the scenes pushing resistance against Musk and the Trump administration, the Washington Examiner reported in November, and has opposed Musk in various forms and previously backed corporate boycotts against Musk, the Washington Free Beacon reported.
Along with his criticism of DOGE, Cass has been a vocal opponent of another one of the Trump administration’s top priorities, tax cuts.
Despite Cass offering some praise of Trump, he has been a longtime critic of Trump’s 2017 tax cuts, calling them an ‘expensive failure’ and saying Trumpism is facing an ‘inevitable expiration’ and adding in September 2020 that Trump is ‘building no intellectual foundation, no institutional infrastructure and no policy agenda.’
‘Oren Cass is a former Romney staffer upset that Trump is cutting taxes and cutting government spending, DOGE shouldn’t care about the political assessment of a man who just lost a local school board election,’ Mike Palicz, director of Americans for Tax Reform, told Fox News Digital.
David McIntosh, Club for Growth president, told Fox News Digital in a statement, ‘So American Compass opposes the Trump tax cuts, and now Elon Musk’s work to cut federal government waste, it’s almost like he’s just a paid-puppet of the left – oh wait, he is.’
After Trump’s 2024 election victory, Cass continued to signal opposition to Trump’s tax policy.
‘Well, I think we have today a politics where both candidates go around talking about how they`re just going to cut everybody`s taxes,’ Cass told PBS on Nov. 10. ‘And, of course, everybody likes a tax cut. But I don`t think those are the things that are going to turn our economy in a much better direction.’
During another interview earlier this year, Cass said one of the things he thought was ‘most encouraging’ was that there are no ‘mini Trumps’ and that he is ‘extremely encouraged’ by the post-Trump-era Republican leaders he is seeing.
‘American Compass advocates for limited government and a commitment to paying for the government that we have rather than leaving the bill to our children,’ Cass told Fox News Digital in November. ‘Anti-tax zealots can lobby for larger deficits if they want, but conservatives are under no obligation to follow them into the fiscal ditch.’
In a statement to Fox News Digital, a Hewlett Foundation spokesperson said, ‘The Hewlett Foundation funds grantees across the ideological spectrum, including American Compass—specifically for its efforts to prioritize American prosperity and American workers.’
Fox News Digital reached out to the Omidyar Network and American Compass for comment.