Wakanda (not) forever: US removes fictional nation from trade list
The US Department of Agriculture (USDA) has removed the fictional country of Wakanda from an online list of nations that have free trade agreements with the United States.
Francis Tseng, a New York-based software engineer, discovered the listing for the made-up home of Marvel superhero Black Panther while researching US agricultural tariffs, and posted a screenshot on Twitter.
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The department said the fictional country was added to its systems during testing, and should not have been visible to the public.
“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 spokesperson told NBC.
“The Wakanda information should have been removed after testing and has now been taken down.”
Tseng said he was “very confused” when he first found Wakanda’s listing.
“I was very confused at first and thought I mis-remembered the country from the movie and got it confused with something else,” Tseng told Reuters.
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Before the listing was removed, Tseng downloaded a data set listing tariff codes for various categories of goods traded between Wakanda and the US including live animals, dairy goods, tobacco and alcohol.
After it was deleted from the site, Tseng tweeted: “Well, the USDA took Wakanda off the list. Guess we’re in a trade war with them too.”