This country exists only in the universe of Marvel Comics. The US Department of Agriculture (USDA) has listed since-then removed fictional Wakanda - from heroic action movie 'Black Panther' - as a free trade agreement partner of the United States.
According to NBC, the Agricultural Tariff Tracker, maintained by the Agriculture Department’s Foreign Agricultural Service, had Wakanda on the list until Wednesday afternoon.
Wakanda is listed as a US free trade partner on the USDA website?? pic.twitter.com/xcq1OFTIPh
— Francis Tseng (@frnsys) December 18, 2019
The comprehensive data for Wakanda included information about vegetables, coffee beans, essential oils, and livestock. Notably, cows and frozen Chinese water chestnuts were reportedly listed as tariff-free imports.
The USDA explained the error of turning fiction into reality as a simple test.
“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 [...] The Wakanda information should have been removed after testing and has now been taken down”, USDA spokesman Mike Illenberg told NBC over email.
