The agreements were modest, and the proposed new round of trade negotiations to be held under the auspices of the WTO are scheduled to place trade in agriculture at the top of the agenda. The reasons underlying the lack of negotiation success in the area of agriculture trade are quite simple. Throughout the world, governments traditionally afford their agriculture sector special policy status. They all do it for a variety of reasons. For example, in many states around the world, the stability of the domestic food production and distribution systems serve as a virtual lifeline for the population.
States protect the agriculture industry in order to keep their populations fed.
Along political lines, states with a large agriculture sector, in both percentage of the population working and percentage of GDP attributed to agriculture must contend with influential farm lobbies. For all these reasons and more, governments have traditionally set up barriers to trade in agriculture to insure the continued stability of domestic market and to provide the domestic market a strategic advantage in technology development. In brief, the CAP is a subsidy based policy erected to maintain a strong and vibrant European agriculture market. The following section examines the two current GM food related trade problems between the U.S. and the EU, EU importation of BSE beef and BT corn from the U.S. United State - EU Trade Trade between the U.S. and the EU is big business. This is equal to the share of US-Canada bilateral trade.