Marvel’s Kingdom of Wakanda, home of Black Panther, is not a U.S. trading partner, despite anything you might have read this week on the U.S. Department of Agriculture website.
When a New York software engineer named Francis Tseng was doing research for a fellowship application, he clicked on a drop-down menu at the website, finding listings for such trade partners as Honduras, Korea, Costa Rica and Peru and the entirely fictional Wakanda. The fake country’s entry came complete with tariff codes for animals, tobacco, dairy products and alcohol.
Tseng revealed his discovery on Twitter, with screen shots of the USDA website (see it below).
The Department of Agriculture removed the listing Wednesday, explaining to the Washington Post that the inclusion of Wakanda was a left-over from a not-for-public consumption site test.
Tseng then tweeted, “Well, the USDA took Wakanda off the list. guess we’re in a trade war with them too.”