With Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi now in Latin America for a nine-day visit to four countries, the White House has just recently announced that Vice President Joe Biden will travel to Brazil for the World Cup this summer.

Behind the excitement is the sense that the Pacific Alliance is a hard-nosed business deal, rather than the usual gassy rhetoric of Latin American summitry. Under the leftist governments that rule in much of South America, there has been plenty of talk of regional integration, but precious little practice of it.