World Trade Organization members included fishery subsidies in the Doha round of trade negotiations. This paper develops a simple model to show why prospects for a deal on fisheries subsidies may be difficult. To focus on trade issues, we consider fisheries that do not fall under the jurisdiction of more than one country. Typically governments using subsidies find themselves in a Prisoner's dilemma. If two countries use subsidies to promote employment in some sector, then one country's subsidy will push down the world price, undermining the other country's attempt to promote its output. This creates incentives to negotiate to curtail subsidies. These incentives may not exist in fisheries for 3 reasons. First, if fisheries are severely depleted, one country's subsidy reduces its long run supply of fish, raising prices and benefiting other fish exporting countries. Hence the usual Prisoner's Dilemma does not exist. Second, if governments use other policies (such as season closures) to control fish stocks, then changes in subsidies may not affect harvests and hence may not generate international spillover effects. And third, even if governments were compelled to reduce fishery subsidies, there may be little real effect because governments would be motivated to weaken other regulations targeting the fish sector.