U.S. Government Listed Wakanda On An Official Tariff Tracker Site

It's been a weird week in Washington, D.C., And nothing quite wraps it all up like a American government official listing Wakanda — the fictional East African country which is residence to Marvel's Black Panther — as a complimentary trade partner with the U.S. On an online tool from U.S. Department of Agriculture to track tariffs, according to Slate.


The country was removed from the list, yet not before Francis Tseng, a New York-based software engineer, spotted it once he was looking for fellowships, BBC News reported.


“I certainly did a double take,” Tseng told NBC News. “I Googled Wakanda to prepare ensure it was actually fiction, and I wasn’t misremembering. I mean, I couldn’t believe it.”


"I was very confused at first and thought I misremembered the nation from the movie and got it mistaken with something else," Tseng added to Reuters. He tweeted out a downloaded Excel sheet that listed all the goods that Wakanda (read: fake nation) trades with the U.S., Including live animals, dairy goods, tobacco, and alcoholic beverages. "The U.S. Would no doubt attempt to liberalize Wakanda's markets and flood it with inexpensive subsidized corn," Tseng tweeted. And once the U.S. Took Wakanda off the list, Tseng tweeted: "Guess we’re in a trade war with them too."


According to NBC News, the USDA says it used Wakanda while testing the system and simply didn't remember to delete it.


"Over the past few weeks, the Foreign Agricultural Service personnel who preserve the Tariff Tracker have been using test files to make sure that the system is running correctly Mike Illenberg, a USDA spokesman, told NBC News over email. "The Wakanda statistics should have been removed soon after testing and has right now been taken down."


Wakanda forever.