Our best-selling beer comes from Mexico

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis had hoped to elevate Mexico’s detrimental impact on the U.S. economy this month by airlifting Venezuelan migrants seeking asylum near the Texas border to Sacramento and Los Angeles.

It turns out that the far right of his own Republican Party was thirsty for another fight.

Outraged that Bud Light had partnered with transgender social media influencer Dylan Mulvaney, conservative luminaries such as Kid Rock launched a boycott just as DeSantis was making his California move.

Sales of Bud Light sank. Sales of a rival from Mexico, Modelo Especial, rose. The Mexican economy is now producing the most popular beer in the United States.

The story begins about a decade and two presidents ago. Anheuser-Busch has not been headquartered in St. Louis for some time. Its home is in Leuven, Belgium, and is part of InBev.

In 2012, InBev announced plans to purchase a majority stake in Grupo Modelo of Mexico.

The Justice Department challenged the merger, fearing the consolidation’s impact on America’s beer economy. InBev relented, and Anheuser-Busch and Modelo were to remain competitors.

This thwarting of a beverage monopoly did not capture much attention at the time, as InBev in 2013 agreed to sell Grupo Modelo to New York-based Constellation Brands. But it aligned the proverbial stars for a fierce competition between the conglomerates that prompted Bud Light to take a fateful chance on a 26-year-old transgender actress and comedian.

Dylan Mulvaney has more than 10 million followers on TikTok and is a leading personality on the app.

Bud Light decided to harness her social media power by sending her some beer with her likeness on the can. Mulvaney got noticed, and then some. Some Bud Light fans launched a social media counterattack by shooting at their cans of beer. A grass-roots boycott began to unfold.

The result: National sales of Bud Light were down 24 percent in the first week of June compared to 2022. Modelo Especial sales, meanwhile, went up 12 percent. This was enough to make it America’s favorite beer, dethroning a Bud Light reign that lasted more than two decades.

Politics aside, Dylan Mulvaney and the American right may have inadvertently teamed up to do the country a great service. A best-selling beer need not taste bad, but according to the reviewers at BeerAdvocate, Bud Light earns a score of 47 out of 100. That places the beer in its “awful” category.