Beer Wars
BEER WARS....Evan Newmark of the Wall Street Journal explains why workers should welcome a foreign takeover of Anheuser Busch:
InBev offers Anheuser Busch shareholders a lot of money and its employees a new-and-improved management team....And it's a tight ship focused on cost-cutting and profits. Just like any company — American, Belgian or Brazilian should be.Am I the only one who thinks workers are going to be less than reassured by the prospect of a "new-and-improved management team" that's "focused on cost-cutting"? Newmark might want to take a second crack at this.
In any case, his main point is that "it would be politically untenable for Obama to welcome a takeover," so John McCain should take the bait and position himself as a champion of free trade, even if it does mean letting a Belgian company run by a Brazilian dude take control of good 'ol American Budweiser. After all, who better to take a stand on this than a guy who dumped his first wife 30 years ago in order to marry a wealthy heiress who now owns one of the largest Anheuser Busch distributors in the country?
On second thought, somebody may need to call rewrite on this script. It's not really working, is it?
FWIW, my prediction is that, contra Newmark, Obama can stay neutral on this with no problem. It's not a trade deal, it won't send jobs overseas, and it's not a tax scam. It's just an acquisition of a beer company. Nothing in Obama's record, or the record of his economic advisors, suggests to me that he'll try to demagogue this.