Meet Mark Grebner, the Michigan statistician who helped pioneer the science of predicting whether someone will vote Republican or Democratic.

Two decades of sustained effort to build national self-reliance and minimize imports have antagonized trade partners but fortified what a senior adviser called Beijing’s “bulwark” against conflicts.

The literary titan is still publishing books, and still pushing envelopes, at 83. But you will not see him in the United States anytime soon.