While Chap. 1 highlights how international operations management is interconnected with global trade activities, this chapter covers globalization, government interventions, and two contemporary issues: globalization trends in the USA and China, and reshoring. The chapter begins with a discussion of Friedman’s ten enablers of globalization. These enablers include the collapse of the Berlin Wall, Netscape, workflow software, open sourcing, outsourcing, offshoring, supply chaining, insourcing, informing, and the steroids. They illustrate how operations evolve in response to globalization trends. The chapter then examines five common government interventions in free trade: import tariffs, import quotas, voluntary export restraints, subsidies, and local content requirements. The chapter concludes with a review of globalization trends in the USA and China, the world’s top two economies, with a special section exploring the factors behind US reshoring.