Agricultural trade has become an art of identifying loopholes and re-categorizing subsidies that curtail risk to profits at home while perpetuating hunger abroad. Trade dominance amounts to how well a country can leverage subsidies exempt from World Trade Organization (WTO) limits and reduction commitments and maintain programs that create and expand markets in vulnerable regions. Developing countries suffer under the brunt of these actions in the form of food insecurity.

Food insecurity is a lucrative endeavor for U.S. agribusiness corporations. As a matter of course, hunger has taken a backseat to maintaining a dominant trade position when it comes to U.S. trade negotiations and domestic policy. In order to address global hunger effectively, the U.S. government will have to acknowledge the effect its current agricultural policy has on global food security and extend the same lenience to allow developing countries the reestablishment of sovereignty in their own food systems without threat of dispute settlement or retaliatory trade sanctions. As it stands, wealth, subsidy classification, export credits and food aid contribute to a system of subjugation and persisting power disparities.