(Newswire.net — December 24, 2019) — The US Department of Agriculture has added Wakanda to the list of free trade countries, although it is a fictional place, BBC reports.
The ministry’s website has a list of goods traded by the US and Wakanda, with ducks, donkeys and cows on the list.
Wakanda was first mentioned in the comic book Fantastic Four in 1966 but rose to prominence last year when the movie Black Panther was adapted.
In the world of Marvel comics and films, Wakanda is a fictional state in East Africa where the Black Panther superhero was born. It is a technologicaly advanced society, but also a complete work of fiction.
Wakanda was deleted from the Ministry’s list after US media joked that a trade war would begin between the US and Wakanda.
The list on which the fictional state found itself was first noticed by Francis Tseng, a New York software engineer seeking a scholarship in agriculture. He told Reuters that he was “very confused” when he saw that Wakanda was on the list.
“I thought I remembered the wrong country from the movie and mixed it with something else,” said Tseng in an interview with Reuters.
When they “removed” the list from the site, a spokesman for the Department of Agriculture told the Washington Post that Wakanda found itself on a test list that only employees needed to see.
“Information about Wakanda was supposed to be removed after testing, and now it is removed,” he said.
After changing the list, the journalist asked if the US trades with Wakanda, and whether there are negotiations with Agrabah, the fictional city where Aladdin lives.
This is not the first time a fictional country has “found a place” in the real world, or a real country went missing from the reference. On the cover of the EU guide there was a map of Member States, including the UK. Wells, however, mysteriously disappeared from the map.
Two years ago, the then Polish Foreign Minister, Witold Waszczykowski, told reporters that he had talked about Poland’s candidacy for membership of the United Nations Security Council with representatives from numerous countries, such as Belize and San Escobar.
While Belize does exist, San Escobar does not.