Last Updated on December 19, 2019
The US Department of Agriculture listed the fictional country of ‘Wakanda’ as a US trading partner, it has emerged.
A USDA spokesperson said that Wakanda was added to the list by accident during a staff test, according to The BBC.
An online tracker on the department’s website detailing activity between the US and the fictional nation showed a list of goods such as ducks, donkeys and dairy cows which had been traded.
Yellow potatoes were to keep a “0.5 cent/kg” base rate when imported from Wakanda, according to The Washington Post.
The tracker listed hundreds of data inputs for Wakanda, which the department has now deleted.
Wakanda appeared alongside Colombia, Costa Rica, Peru and other actual partners which the US trades with.
The test was never meant to go public, but, due to an internal error, the list bemused a social media user, Francis Tseng, a software engineer who was researching agricultural tariffs as part of information for a fellowship he was applying for.
Wakanda is listed as a US free trade partner on the USDA website?? pic.twitter.com/xcq1OFTIPh
— Francis Tseng (@frnsys) December 18, 2019
The USDA spokesperson told the Washington Post: “The Wakanda information should have been removed after testing and has now been taken down.”
The BBC gives a brief history of Wakanda:
In the Marvel universe, Wakanda is the fictional East African home country of superhero Black Panther.
The fictional country was removed soon from the list after US media first queried it, prompting jokes that the countries had started a trade war.
Wakanda first appeared in the Fantastic Four comic in 1966, and made a reappearance when Black Panther was adapted into an Oscar-winning film last year.
The purpose of the government tests using Wakanda is unclear.
