a PhD student said my proposal is too simple

hi, everyone! I am an aspiring researcher currently seeking a PhD position in the EU. over the past month, I have been writing and finessing a prospective proposal on my desired research interest. one thing I have suffered from a lot has been getting a discipline-specific person to take a look at my proposal and offer some criticisms.

a few days ago, a friend of mine offered to send it to a scholar she knows to get his opinions on it. what I didn't know at that point was that he is getting his PhD in experimental economics, whereas my focus is on internation trade and governance.

anyway, she got back to me with his thoughts and needless to say, it has shaken my faith in my value as a researcher quite a bit. what he said can basically be summed up into the following:

1. my empirical model is not unique. it feels like an old wine in a new bottle.
2. my focus group is too wide and complicated. doctoral schools don't like that.
3. my proposal is stale. every international econ. paper is about export, import, FDI, GVC and its effects.
4. he basically discouraged me from going for intl. econ, saying the field is oversaturated and I don't seem to stand out yet.

the problem is I'm receiving so many different and contrasting informations. my professors have told me to focus more on questions, with a simple acknowledgement of all possible methodologies. some postdoc friends I have in econ and other fields have told me to keep the proposal sufficiently wide, to make sure a prospective supervisor does not perceive me as stiff and uncompromising. i have tried my best to glean objective criticisms from all that dialogue, but I am getting increasingly lost in the sauce.

how do I handle this?