May 16: China has agreed to buy 200 Boeing jets, with a potential for the order to rise to as many as 750 planes, US President Donald Trump told reporters on Friday, adding that the planes would have GE Aerospace engines.
The deal "includes approximately 200 planes and a promise of up to 750 if they do a good job," Trump told reporters. More details on the deal, such as the type of jets and the deliverytimeline, were not immediately available.
The orders, if finalised, would mark Boeing's first major Chinese deal in nearly a decade, after the US planemaker was largely shut out of the world's second-largest aviation market amid trade tensions between Beijing and Washington.
Boeing said the deal involved "an initial commitment" for 200 aircraft and that it expected more such commitments to follow after what it described as the initial tranche.
The planemaker traditionally uses the word "commitments" to refer to preliminary deals that are yet to be finalized, and are not posted on the company's official order backlog.
Boeing said it now looked forward "to continually addressing China's aircraft demand".
Boeing CEO Kelly Ortberg, and GE Aerospace chief Larry Culp were among the group of American executives who accompanied Trump to China in hopes of clinching deals or resolving business disputes.
Trump saidChina's Boeing orders include models 777 and 737, in an interview onFox News' Special Report with Bret Baier.
"He (Xi) committed to 200 Boeings, big ones, 777s, and 737s, and a lot of big, big ones, big, beautiful Boeing planes," Trump said in the interview aired on Friday evening.
For China, such a big order would secure capacity to keep growing its aviation market as production of its home-grown COMAC C919 narrow-body falls short of ambitious targets.
It would also help Boeing narrow the gap with rival Airbus AIR.PA, which has pulled far ahead in China in recent years.
An estimate from aviation intelligence and advisory firm IBA put the value of the 200-aircraft order at roughly $17 billion to $19 billion, assuming 80 percent of the mix is made up of MAX jets.
"This number, however, could increase to $25 billion if a larger proportion (around 40 percent) of the total order is announced for the widebody aircraft," IBA's Samuel Kenekueyero said.
The deal would be a much-needed win for Trump, whose aggressive tariffs and other trade policies have so far failed to make much of a dent in the large US trade deficit. "Reuters
