U.S DID REALLY LISTED “WAKANDA” AS TRADING PARTNER!
The Marvel Universe “Black Panther” has now officially been removed from a list of countries on a site that tracks tariffs, U.S.
The United States Department of Agriculture listed the fictional land “Wakanda” as a free-trade partner. The US Department of Agriculture spokesperson said,
“The Kingdom of Wakanda was added to the list by accident, during a staff test.”
The department’s online tariff tracker staff member hosted a detailed list of goods the two nations allegedly traded. The list included ducks, donkeys, and dairy cows.
The Kingdom of Wakanda is a fictional East African home country to superhero Black Panther created by the Marvel Universe Studios. Wakanda first appeared in the Fantastic Four comic in 1966 and made reappeared when Black Panther was adapted into an Oscar-winning franchise film last year, 2018.
The fictional country was soon removed from the list, shortly after the U.S media first queried it and when twitter started prompting memes that the states had started a trade war.
After the listing was removed, the spokesperson of USDA told the Washington Post,
“Wakanda’s listing was added as a test file for staff, and never supposed to be public. The Wakanda information should have been removed after testing and has now been taken down.”
The unusual listing was spotted by Francis Tseng, a New Yorker based software engineer. He happened to look up agricultural tariffs for a fellowship for which he was applying for, and that when he glanced at the Kingdom of Wakanda.
Francis Tseng told Reuters news agency that,
“When I first saw Wakanda on the list, I got very confused. I thought I misremembered the country from the movie and got it confused with something else.”
However, this is not the first time a fictional country had slipped into the real world.
In 2017, Poland’s former foreign minister Witold Waszczykowski told the reporters that he had met a representative of several nations to discuss Poland’s bid to join the United Nation’s security council; he addressed the countries as, “Belize or San Escobar.” While Belize does exist, certainly, San Escobar does not.
At the same time, officials have occasionally erased countries that do exists in real life. In 2004, the cover of a Europe guidebook featured a map of Europe member states, including the U.K. However, Wales was mysteriously absent.
Francis Tseng jokingly tweeted, suggesting that the U.S,
“would no doubt try to liberalize Wakanda’s market’s and flood it with cheap, subsidized corn.”
An Orlando based reporter quoted,
“So do we, or do we not have free trade with Wakanda? Also, where are things on negotiations with Agrabah?”
The U.S Department of Agriculture responded with a funny tweet, using their hashtag; #WakandaForever, promising that
“While we removed the Kingdom of Wakanda from our list of US free trade partners, our relationship will always be strong.”
