If there’s one thing we know now, it’s that the members of the IT department of the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) have a sense of humor and are up to date on pop culture references. The Kingdom of Wakanda, the fictional East African country that’s the home of Marvel superhero Black Panther, was added to the USDA’s foreign agricultural service’s tariff tracker during a system test. And someone obviously forgot to remove it, making the day of many Black Panther fans on Twitter.
Photo: Black Panther/Facebook
Black Panther’s Wakanda Listed as One of the US’ Trade Partners
by
Eben Diskin
Dec 20, 2019
One of the first to spot the country listed on the website was Francis Tseng, a New York-based software engineer.
Wakanda is listed as a US free trade partner on the USDA website?? pic.twitter.com/xcq1OFTIPh
— Francis Tseng (@frnsys) December 18, 2019
Tseng told Reuters that he got very confused when he saw Wakanda on the list. “[I] thought I misremembered the country from the movie,” he said, “and got it confused with something else.”
The commodities that were exchanged between the two nations ranged from “live asses” to “mules and hinnies.”
The USDA acknowledged its mistake and laughed it off with tweet.
While we removed the Kingdom of Wakanda from our list of US free trade partners, our relationship will always be strong #WakandaForever pic.twitter.com/wiRSCIdfGh
— Dept. of Agriculture (@USDA) December 19, 2019