Presidential hopeful who's big on the nitty gritty

ONE of the conventional wisdoms of American politics is that while voters may be attracted to candidates with Big Ideas, they pay less attention to the specifics of policy proposals. Slogans energise your average voter; statistics make him or her fall asleep.

Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump running as an economic nationalist was able to capture the hearts and minds of many Americans by pledging to Make America Great Again without providing concrete details on how he was planning to do that and what would be the consequences of his policies.

The idea of bringing manufacturing jobs back home and "punishing" China for "stealing" them sounded great. But how would that happen and was it even doable? And in particular, shouldn't we be worried that Chinese retaliation would hurt the American economy, like its agricultural sector?