Is the multinational behemoth that owns Budweiser—AB InBev—a threat to American beer? Democrats seem to think so. In their populist campaign manifesto for 2018, “A Better Deal,” they warn, “In the last year, InBev which owns Anheuser-Busch and is the world’s largest beer company, struck a deal to purchase SABMiller, the second largest. The companies have already announced that jobs will be cut as a result of the merger, and the resulting conglomerate will make it even harder for small, local breweries to compete.”
And that’s not all. Critics also mourn the loss of startup breweries bought by the Lager Leviathan. Once an independent brewery knuckles under to InBev, you see, it ceases to be, strictly speaking, a craft beer—even if the product is exactly the same. And that’s bad. One recent example is North Carolina’s Wicked Weed, which InBev bought earlier this year.
