The purpose of this paper is to present and discuss the economic core of the protective rice policies in four major developed nations; the United States, Australia, Japan, and the European Economic Community (EEC). The fundamental economic aspects of rice policies are emphasized and not their operational details and statistics. The main purpose is to show how these policies protect domestic rice producers and to suggest how they may impinge upon world trade. The analytical tools are simple economics of static partial equilibrium together with some discussion of the economic and political setting within which the policies function.