The US Department of Agriculture listed Wakanda, the fictional East African home country of superhero Black Panther, as a free-trade partner of the United States.
Wakanda was listed on the drop-down menu for the agriculture department’s foreign agricultural service’s tariff tracker up until Wednesday. The fictional country was listed along with Colombia, Costa Rica, Dominican Republic, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua, Panama and Peru.
“There were hundreds of data inputs for Wakanda… Different commodity groups offered on drop-down menus range from fresh vegetables and unroasted coffee beans to essential oils and livestock,” NBC News reported before the Wakanda data was scrubbed from the site Wednesday. “Yellow potatoes had to maintain a ‘0.5 cent/kg’ base rate when shipped in from the fictional East African nation, while frozen Chinese water chestnuts were tariff free if the U.S. decided to import them from Wakanda. Cows were also tariff free.”
A USDA spokesperson said the Kingdom of Wakanda was added to the list by accident during a staff test.
“Over the past few weeks, the Foreign Agricultural Service staff who maintain the Tariff Tracker have been using test files to ensure that the system is running properly,” a USDA spokesman said in a statement. “The Wakanda information should have been removed after testing and has now been taken down.”
