Black Panther’s fictional home Wakanda was listed on USDA tariff tracker
Wakanda, the fictional country from Marvel’s “Black Panther,” was listed as a free trade agreement partner of the U.S. by the Agriculture Department, according to NBC News.
The Agricultural Tariff Tracker maintained by the United States Department of Agriculture’s (USDA) Foreign Agricultural Service had Wakanda on the list until Wednesday afternoon.
The USDA told NBC that it used Wakanda as a test and forgot to remove it.
“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,” Mike Illenberg, a USDA spokesman, told NBC over email. “The Wakanda information should have been removed after testing and has now been taken down.”
Francis Tseng, a fellow at the Jain Family Institute, noticed the Marvel country listed and tweeted about it on Wednesday morning, NBC reported.
Wakanda is listed as a US free trade partner on the USDA website?? pic.twitter.com/xcq1OFTIPh
— Francis Tseng (@frnsys) December 18, 2019
Data for Wakanda included information about commodity groups such as vegetables, coffee beans, essential oils and livestock. Cows and frozen Chinese water chestnuts were listed as tariff-free imports from Wakanda.
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