US government lists fictional nation Wakanda as trade partner

The US Department of Agriculture listed fictional nation Wakanda as a free-trade partner, despite the fact that the country doesn’t exist.

 

Wakanda is a fictional East African country from Black Panther, which was adapted into a film last year. But the USDA listed it as one of  their free-trade partners.

 

 

The department’s online tariff tracker hosted a detailed list of goods US and Wakanda apparently traded, including ducks, donkeys and dairy cows.

 

 

The unusual listing was spotted by Francis Tseng, a New York-based software engineer who was looking up agricultural tariffs for a fellowship he was applying for.

 

 

He told Reuters news agency that when he first saw Wakanda on the list, he got “very confused”.

 

 

He added:  “[I] thought I misremembered the country from the movie and got it confused with something else.”

 

 

A USDA spokesperson said the Kingdom of Wakanda was added to the list by accident during a staff test.

 

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.

 

After the listing was removed, a USDA spokesman told the Washington Post that Wakanda’s listing was added as a test file for staff, and was never supposed to be public.