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The U.S. and Canadian governments have also provided subsidies to promote domestic fishery development for many years. In addition, they have also used approximately $3 billion on income maintenance for unemployed fishermen and fish plant workers and to improve fishery science. Starting in the 1960s, most subsidies were intended to expand the fishing industry by, for example, helping fishermen buy boats and sell their catches at lower prices. Nevertheless, in the 1990s, when people started to realize the problem of overfishing, both countries began to subsidize the fishing industry with buyback programs to reduce the size of their fishing of fishing fleets. Although these subsidies were introduced in response to the problem of overfishing, most subsidies in both countries are still intended to expand the fishing industry (Schrank, 2003).
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In view of the harmful nature of some subsidies, the World Trade Organization advised its members to restrict subsidies designed to promote exports and established controls over all other form forms of subsidies. However, Japan and the United States, which are the main decision-makers of the World Trade Organization, endorse the "no-need approach" in which they propose no restriction of subsidies as they dispute the causal link between subsidies and over-exploitation overexploitation of fish resources. They suggest that poor fisheries fishery management, instead of subsidies, is the main cause of over-fishingoverfishing. Therefore, they propose that regimes deal with that regulatory regimes including catch controls (quotas), effort controls (restrictions on boat size, engine power and days at sea, etc.) and right-based structures (permits, individual transferable quotas, etc.) should be implemented indeed to improve the international fisheries fishery management. Therefore, difficulties in restricting subsidies internationally exist it is difficult to internationally restrict fishing subsidies (Benitah, 2004).
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