Spoiler alert for a Marvel movie that made over a billion dollars, but at the end of Black Panther King T’Challa makes the radical decision to break from tradition and open the isolated nation of Wakanda to the outside world. The post-credits scene has the hero before the United Nations ready to blow the minds of stuffy white bureaucrats skeptical that a “poor country of African farmers” really has the knowledge and the resources to change the world.
Well according to a report on NBC News, even us moviegoers may not have given Wakanda enough credit. Wakanda didn’t just open itself up to the larger MCU but to our real world as well since the fictional country is listed as an actual free trade partner on the USDA’s tariff tracker. Someone get me a plane ticket because I’m ready to move.
Wakanda is listed as a US free trade partner on the USDA website?? pic.twitter.com/xcq1OFTIPh
— Francis Tseng (@frnsys) December 18, 2019
As countries around the world get embroiled in trade wars, the tariff tracker is a useful tool for the US Department of Agriculture to monitor what it actually takes to import and export food from other nations. It’s economically and politically important to know which partners you can freely trade with when it comes to deals over produce or livestock as well as responding to hunger crises.
In theory, the progressive Wakanda would totally be down to liberally share its wealth with the globe. Maybe not its Vibranium but definitely its food. Perhaps that’s why Jain Family Institute fellow Francis Tseng wasn’t quite sure the Marvel country was fake when he first saw it listed in the USDA tariff tracker, according to NBC. But as much as we would like to believe the Black Panther’s homeland has a rate of “0.5 cent/kg” for yellow potatoes and other great food lore, we must remember Wakanda is more an awesome Afrofuturist state of mind rather than a real place.
Initially, Marvel and the USDA were suspiciously silent when it came to this info that’s apparently been in the database since June. Perhaps we had actually unraveled a real conspiracy Stan Lee and Jack Kirby have been trying to tell us about since 1996. However, the USDA then followed up with an explanation to NBC saying this was just dummy files to test the system. Wakanda has since been removed from the tracker. It’s fun to dream.
USDA update:
“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. The Wakanda information should have been removed after testing and has now been taken down.”— Phil McCausland (@PhilMcCausland) December 18, 2019
For more on Black Panther watch our review of the movie and check out our Marvel gift guide.
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