TRUMPONOMICS:

Here's another extremely fungible passage:

"China shall require the administrative authorities to transfer a case for criminal enforcement, if, under an objective standard, there is 'reasonable suspicion' based on articulately facts that a criminal violation of an intellectual property right has occurred. "

It's 2020, if there's anything world knows now it's that it's not hard to argue about "articulable facts," and when politics are involved any "objective standard" tends to go out the window. And politics will be involved, because the enforcement mechanism is inherently political. We'll tackle that next.

This deal has an enforcement agreement unlike any other, according to Chad Bown, a trade expert at the Peterson Institute. In a call following the its signing, he told reporters that it was odd that the deal makes no mention of the word "tariff." That is to say, it lacks any specifics for how to punish a party if it transgresses in this deal -- there are no guidelines on what is appropriate.

Even stranger, according to Bown, is that this deal does not take disputes to an overarching enforcement body. Enforcement is left to the office of the US Trade Representative, which then undertakes an up to 90-day adjudication and discussion process with its Chinese counterparts to try to resolve the conflict.

After the enforcement process is through, if the company that feels it has been wronged is not satisfied with the remedies presented by the offender its home country agrees, the country can "in good faith" put tariffs on the offending country. The offending country, then, is not supposed to retaliate.

However, and this is a big however: If the country hit by those new tariffs doesn't agree the import taxes were put on "in good faith," it has no recourse but to leave the deal, a senior administration official told reporters in a call following the deal's signing.

That's it. 

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