Europe is the land of generous social programs with not as much inequality as in the U.S., right? If the European Union (EU) is taken as a single country, economic data show that the EU and the U.S. have similar levels of inequality.

The idea of trade facilitation is simple: help developing countries implement measures to reduce the cost of trading across borders by improving infrastructure, institutions, services, policies, procedures, and market-oriented regulatory systems.

Despite a somewhat gloomy prognosis for the near future, emerging and other developing countries still have a great potential to "switch over," and in the mid-term, consolidate their position as the new engines of global economic growth.