American Compass New World Gala Debuts “Reclaiming American Citizenship” Project

Last night, American Compass hosted its second annual New World Gala at the National Building Museum. The event included remarks from Senator Josh Hawley and Secretary of the Treasury Scott Bessent. Oren Cass, American Compass’s founder and chief economist, also announced a new chapter for the organization marked by the launch of the Reclaiming American Citizenship project. The project widens the scope of American Compass’s work beyond conservative economics to blaze the trail for a renewal of Americans’ communal, economic, national, and political lives.

This new “project for the people” will focus on rebuilding a shared, family-oriented culture, properly functioning markets which give the opportunity for positive contribution, and a national solidarity which transcends political party. About the project, Cass said: “The more we read and brainstormed and iterated…we kept returning to one word: citizenship. …Citizenship is the bond that turns a population into a people, establishing mutual obligation within our communities, across the nation, and between generations.”

Senator Hawley opened the program with remarks about the nature of citizenship and the importance of keeping human dignity at the forefront of our efforts to navigate the challenges of artificial intelligence. Hawley said:

• “For too long, working Americans have been given a choice between a party that believes their values are bigotries to be unlearned and a party that believes their wages are externalities to be minimized. A party of the faculty lounge and a party of the boardroom. A party that tells the working man his church is the problem, and a party that tells him his pension is too expensive.”
• “I’m for the republic. I’m for the citizen. I am for labor, the community, and the family. I’m for the worker. I’m for the small town. I’m for the constitutional inheritance that says this country belongs not to a board and not to a bureau, but to the people of the United States.”

Secretary Bessent took the stage for a fireside chat with Oren Cass covering the future of conservative economics, the problems of financialization, the importance of industrial policy, and the need to rebuild pathways to decent lives for young Americans. Bessent said:

• “We have the dogma of the free market is going to give you the best solution. Once you’ve moved beyond that, how do you decide when to act, what kinds of actions might actually improve, get you closer to the equilibrium instead of further away?”
• “National security is economic security, economic security is national security, and I believe the only good thing about COVID was it woke us up. COVID did not cause the problem in the supply chains, it highlighted the problems in the supply chain.”
• “It feels like more and more people want to economically play the lottery. And we need to make people understand that there is a path, that there is a fairness in the system of work hard, do well, and you can have a comfortable life if you play by the rules and the system is not rigged against you.”

American Compass also presented Sam Mulopulos, chief of staff to the U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer, with the Robert E. Lighthizer Award. The award recognizes a rising leader in the conservative movement and highlighted Mulopulos’s tireless work to build a new international trade order and reorient American tradecraft away from the failed consensus of globalization.