During the XX-XXI centuries. the opposition between the concepts of free trade and protectionism grew. The purpose of the study: to identify the key factors of activation and the main features of the emerging policy of legalized hidden protectionism in the world foreign trade practice. Subject of study: hidden protection mechanisms used by the leaders of the global economic system and contenders for their place within the framework of the study period. Synthesis, bibliographic and retrospective analysis, comparison and system-structural approach formed the basis of the methodological apparatus. The working hypothesis of the study is to prove the activation of instruments of hidden protectionism legalized at the state level in the framework of the struggle for world economic hegemony. During the study, three sub-stages of the formation of the system of hidden protectionism during the 20th-21st centuries were identified. Determined that under the conditions of Western-centric globalization, which is characterized by the dualism of the foreign trade policy of economic hegemons, there was an accelerated formation and development of a system of covert protectionism. By the third decade of the XXI century the collapse of the globalization model built by the economic leaders of the period under study led to the beginning of the formation of a multipolar world and an increase in competition between hegemons and contenders for their place. At the same time, the system of hidden protectionism was updated, the catalysts for which were the intensification of the confrontation between the Global North and the Global South, the aggravation of the energy crisis, and the aggravation of the remaining unresolved contradictions of the “unipolar” period. One of the main features of the updated version of covert protectionism is the increasing legalization of protective tools at the national level and, as a result, the establishment of trade-force and sanctions methods of influencing a competitor.