U.S. Government Briefly Listed ‘Black Panther’s’ Wakanda as a Free Trade Partner

LaTesha Harris

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Unfortunately for Wakandians, the U.S. government will no longer partner with the fictional kingdom.

Until yesterday, Wakanda, the main setting of Marvel’s “Black Panther,” was listed as a free trade agreement partner of the U.S. on the agricultural tariff tracker maintained by the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Foreign Agricultural Service.

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Francis Tseng, a research fellow at the Jain Family Institute, discovered the odd listing and tweeted about his confusion on Wednesday.

“The US would no doubt try to liberalize Wakanda’s markets and flood it with cheap subsidized corn,” Tseng said in a follow-up tweet.

The screenshots Tseng shared revealed the alleged agricultural products the U.S. traded with Wakanda: fresh vegetables, unroasted coffee beans, essential oils and livestock.

Wakanda was added to the tracker in July during a system test, meant to be deleted afterward.

“The Foreign Agricultural Service staff who maintain the Tariff Tracker have been using test files to ensure that the system is running properly,” a USDA spokesperson said in a statement. “The Wakanda information should have been removed after testing and has now been taken down.”

Colombia, Costa Rica, Dominican Republic, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua, Panama and Peru are still listed as partners.

The USDA tweeted about the mishap on Thursday.

“While we removed the Kingdom of Wakanda from our list of US free trade partners, our relationship will always be strong #WakandaForever,” the tweet reads.

“Black Panther” starred Chadwick Boseman, Michael B. Jordan, Lupita Nyong’o, Angela Bassett and Danai Gurira. The sequel is slated for release in May 2022.

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