President Donald Trump said the main focus of his China summit is trade, as reports swirled that Boeing is close to landing a sale of around 500 or more aircraft to China’s three major carriers. Kelly Ortberg, Boeing’s chief executive, is traveling with Trump, a sign that the company’s long-dormant business in China could be edging toward a long-awaited reset.
Trump framed the trip around trade, saying he wants “trade, specifically unveiling big transactions for signature U.S. enterprises that further swell our flow of exports, and Washington-Beijing accords that mark a defrosting of the icy standoff between the world’s two biggest economies.” For Boeing, the timing matters. The rumored order is heavily weighted toward the 737 MAX family, the jet that once became the center of one of the company’s deepest crises in China.
Richard Safran, an aviation analyst, said the administration does not effectively announce a deal unless it is already essentially done. He also said Ortberg’s presence is “a pretty good sign the reports are correct” and that the chief executive’s main role is likely “for a photo-op with Chinese officials.”
If the deal is signed during the summit, it would be Boeing’s first Chinese order since 2017. That would mark a striking turn for a market that was once central to the manufacturer’s growth and is now only slowly reopening after years of disruption. Boeing expects to exit 2025 delivering 52 737s, a reminder of how much the company still depends on the narrow-body jet line even as it tries to rebuild credibility abroad.
China became the first country to ground the MAX in March 2019 after the fatal Ethiopian Airlines crash and months after the earlier Lion Air disaster. The ban lasted four years, and shipments to China did not resume until January 2024. Since the blockage began seven years ago, Boeing has sent just over 100 planes to China, while China’s regulators repeatedly reviewed Boeing shipments after the restart.
The scale of the rumored order helps explain why the market is watching Boeing stock so closely. Safran said that getting Boeing’s formerly biggest customer back “bolsters the case for its airplanes, and especially its best-selling 737 MAX family.” Trump, for his part, has been eager to boast about business wins, with Safran saying the president “loves to trumpet when he brings business to the U.S.”
The broader commercial stakes stretch far beyond this summit. Boeing and Airbus both expect China to rank as the world’s largest aircraft market by 2043, with the country’s commercial fleet projected to double to nearly 10,000 planes by then. If this reported order becomes real, it would not just be another sale. It would be the clearest sign yet that Boeing’s China pipeline is moving again after years of near-freeze.
