Vice President Joe Biden was in Brazil Monday for a meeting with Brazilian president Dilma Rousseff and to attend the USA’s World Cup game versus Ghana. The following day, Biden addressed the staff of the U.S. embassy in Brasilia and related an anecdote from the World Cup game to illustrate what the vice president described as a close relationship between the two countries:
Anheuser-Busch, the maker of Budweiser, was purchased in 2008 by InBev, a Belgian-Brazilian multinational company headquartered in Leuven, Belgium. Anheuser-Busch only makes passing mention on its website of its ownership (“a wholly-owned subsidiary of Anheuser-Busch InBev, the leading global brewer”), emphasizing rather the company’s U.S. beer sales and twelve breweries located in the U.S.
A 2011 article at AdAge.com noted that there had been speculation that the 2008 purchase of Anheuser-Busch by the foreign InBev “could be a disaster” given the “patriotic-infused marketing” the beer maker often employs. But such predictions seem to have proved overblown:
Now that Vice President Biden has reminded the world of Budweiser’s non-U.S. ownership during the global World Cup soccer competition, Anheuser-Busch and InBev will likely appreciate the average consumer’s, particularly U.S. consumer’s, “short memory.”