By Mac Margolis

If you want a crash course on globalization, belly up to the bar in the United States. The lesson is not so much in what you'll hear from the idled legions, whose jobs were outsourced to some distant nation, but in what you can drink.

From Tsingtao to Lowenbrau, "foreign" beer is everywhere. In a thirsty country like the U.S., where palate generally trumps nationalism, that is nothing new. For all the exotic labels, you could always count on solid, and eminently pronounceable U.S. brands. A Bud was a Bud was a Bud. Until now, that is.

In mid-June, the huge multinational beverage maker InBev made a hostile takeover bid for Anheuser-Busch, the maker of iconic beer Budweiser. Big companies swallowing other big companies is the American way, of course, but this move was particularly jolting to the land of the King of Beer. InBev, the world's No. 2 brewer, is based in Belgium, a place most U.S. citizens know best for mussels and damp weather. It also sells Stella Artois, a beer that, unlike Budweiser, is famous around the world. One of the selling points of the merger, in fact, was InBev's proposal to hoist the King of Beers into a truly global brand. To add insult to injury, the CEO of InBev (like most of his top staff) is Brazilian, a country best-known in North America for football (oops, soccer) and small swimwear.

For the good people of St. Louis, Mo., home of Anheuser-Busch, this went down badly. Apart from bad puns ("Brewers at Lager Heads" and "Brew-Ha Ha over Budweiser" are two recent headlines), the $46 billion takeover play has provoked indignation, street protests and stout political opposition in Missouri. No matter that InBev pledged not to tamper with Bud's recipe or close any breweries, much less shut down the St. Louis head offices. "It's a bad idea. I don't want you to buy it. The people of Missouri don't want you to buy it," Sen. Claire McCaskill, a Missouri Democrat, told InBev chief Carlos Brito, reportedly over a cold Bud. "I will do everything I can to stop this sale from going through."

Having long scolded poorer nations for squandering their resources and ignoring the lessons of Western-style capitalism, some people in developed countries now seem stunned and wounded when the envoys of those same, now upstart, countries come shopping for home-grown assets. The world was supposed to be flat, not upside down.

"I'm worried, I'm annoyed, I'm mad as hell and I don't know what to do about it," Richard Haskayne, a Canadian energy executive, told me not long ago, after the Brazilian mining conglomerate CVRD bought the historic Canadian nickel producer Inco for $18 billion in 2006. With all the new carpetbaggers afoot, he feared, Canada's economy was in danger of losing "all the decision-making and corporate infrastructure of national businesses to places like Rio de Janeiro, Mumbai and Moscow."

Now the consternation has reached the clubby world of beer-making. But Bud is not the only Yankee brew under siege: Not long ago, the U.S.'s other famous brewing town, Milwaukee, was rocked by the purchase of its most cherished brand, Miller, by the South African Brewing company. Known now as S.A.B. Miller, the Johannesburg-born company, which keeps its headquarters in London, is now the biggest brewer in the world.

Like it or not, the anything-goes reality of corporate competition is shaking up America's cozy idea of the world order, not to mention its happy hour, and Americans probably have little choice but to kick back, crack open a new Bud and enjoy it.