The United States and European countries were not always forceful advocates of a free trade. At different times in their history, these countries had a strong impulse toward economic protectionism. After the Second World War, the free trade became dominant concept on the world scale and many scholars took it as the key indicator of the globalization process. However, a new protectionism also appeared, primarily in developed countries. At the beginning of new millennium, in spite of some successful attempts to liberalize world free trade, such efforts still face formidable obstacles. We argue that these obstacles are not principally economic in nature but are the outcomes of deliberate efforts to conserve the actual world order. Therefore, we conclude, the free trade appears not to be a condition of globalization. Rather it is the opposite, the globalization, in its wider sense, is the condition sine qua non of the free trade.