July is out!

On what will be my fifth anniversary at Latin Trade, we have come full circle in every sense of the phrase. July is likely our largest magazine since 2000, at 106 pages in Spanish, our single largest circulation language. There's a lot to talk about, but for now it's worth pointing out a couple of really decent pieces of business reporting.

Mike Kepp got to Jorge Gerdau Johannpeter in his profile of Gerdau's international expansion. A fascinating read, in part because it's a common story: Brazil, Inc. needs to grow abroad or stagnate, a trend we'll very likely see continue for years to come.

Similarly, Ken Rapoza tracked down Carlos Brito speaking in Massachusetts, and with Mike's help in Rio asked the newly minted superbrewer Inbev about its single largest bet -- that U.S. drinkers will be enticed to drop their Coronas, Heinekens and Budweisers for an essentially unknown brand, Brahma.

Marisol Rueda, our Mexico correspondent, nailed the eternal Pemex story -- their running out of cash and time to invest to find more oil -- with tremendous precision and highly placed sources, on the record. Liseth Camacaro in Caracas pulled together a great takeout on PDVSA's surprising turnaround, also with plenty of sources on the record.

Margardia Pfiefer, our Brazil correspondent, took a very complex story, CSN's expansion into mining, and made it relevant and readable to folks who don't know flat from rolled (steel). Finally, if you're looking to turn lemons into lemonade, don't miss Priscila Guilayn's perfect Radar item on selling fake-brand foods in Spain to Latin Americans. She started out trying to simply profile an importer. When her sources began to allege that they guy was breaking the law, it looked like we lost a story. Not so, the story just got better.