Agriculture department says fictional country from Marvel movies was used to test systems and was not meant to remain visible

This article is more than 9 months old

This article is more than 9 months old

Trade talks between Captain America and Black Panther didn’t quite pan out, it seems. Wakanda, the fictional home of the Marvel superhero, is no longer listed as a free trade partner of the US.

Until Wednesday, the made-up east African country was listed on the drop-down menu for the agriculture department’s foreign agricultural service’s tariff tracker along with Colombia, Costa Rica, Dominican Republic, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua, Panama and Peru.

The department (USDA) said the comic book country was added to its systems while it conducted testing.

“Over the past few weeks, the foreign agricultural service staff who maintain the tariff tracker have been using test files to ensure that the system is running properly,” Mike Illenberg, a USDA spokesman, told NBC. “The Wakanda information should have been removed after testing and has now been taken down.”

Francis Tseng, a fellow at the Jain Family Institute, discovered that Wakanda was listed earlier today.

Amongst the commodities listed under Wakanda were “live asses”, “mules and hinnies” and several other farm animals. Potatoes and chestnuts were also reportedly listed.

Wakanda’s most famous agricultural commodity, those heart-shaped purple flowers that appear to give Black Panther his god-like powers, do not appear to have been listed.