US government lists Wakanda as a global ‘trade partner’
Black Panther's technologically advanced African home showed up on a US government website and had people scratching their heads.
Wakanda, from Marvel’s Black Panther. Picture: Movie Still (Marvel Studios).
Did the United States government list the fictional country of Wakanda as a trade partner?
The short answer is “yes and no.”
BBC News reported that a USDA spokesperson said the Kingdom of Wakanda was added to its list of free-trade partners by accident during a staff test.
The so-called accident even went so far as to include a detailed list of goods that the two nations apparently traded in their online tariff tracker, including ducks, donkeys and dairy cows.
fwiw, the US would no doubt try to liberalize Wakanda's markets and flood it with cheap subsidized corn
— Francis Tseng (@frnsys) December 19, 2019
A New York-based software engineer named Francis Tseng spotted the listing while looking up agricultural tariffs 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
According to an unidentified USDA spokesman, the online listing, which was meant to have been removed much earlier, has since been removed.
Wakanda is the fictional East African country that exists in the Marvel Universe and serves as the home of the superhero Black Panther. It was first mentioned/conceptualised in comic books in the late 1960s.
(Compiled by Kaunda Selisho)
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