If you saw the 2018 Marvel movie Black Panther, you know that the fictional land of Wakanda is filled with some incredible technologies. But did you know that Wakanda is a trade partner with the United States? At least that’s what was listed on an official U.S. government website until it was recently taken down.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture listed Wakanda as a trading partner on its Agricultural Tariff Tracker, which allows people to look up the various tariffs on everything from milk to dog food. The website’s menu allowed you to choose between countries like Guatemala, Peru, and Colombia, all of which are real countries. And surprisingly, Wakanda was on the list.
The bizarre listing for Wakanda was first noticed by Francis Tseng on Twitter yesterday, who joked that perhaps we’d start a trade war with the fake country.
Wakanda is listed as a US free trade partner on the USDA website?? pic.twitter.com/xcq1OFTIPh
— Francis Tseng (@frnsys) December 18, 2019
But it all turned out to be a big mistake that was left over from testing the wesbite, according to the USDA.
“The Foreign Agricultural Service staff who maintain the Tariff Tracker have been using test files to ensure that the system is running properly. The Wakanda information should have been removed after testing and has now been taken down,” USDA spokesperson Mike Illenberg told Gizmodo via email.
It could not be confirmed by press time whether President Donald Trump would impose tariffs against vibranium if the Kingdom of Wakanda didn’t open an investigation into Joe Biden.