US Ambassador Says Potential China Deal With Boeing ‘Very Important’ to Trump

After years of stalled trade following the COVID-19 pandemic, U.S. officials on a rare visit to Beijing said a deal could see China commit to purchasing more Boeing jets.

Speaking at a news conference on Sept. 23, U.S. Ambassador to China David Perdue said he believed that the negotiations had entered their last days or weeks, noting that the deal is “very important” to China.

Rep. Adam Smith (D-Wash.), ranking member of the House Armed Services Committee, which oversees the War Department (formally known as the Defense Department) and armed forces, said China’s deal with Boeing had come up in discussions with Beijing.

China had, during the first Trump administration in 2017, agreed to purchase 300 Boeing jets for $37 billion under a U.S.–China trade deal signed during a state visit by Trump. But that commitment was only partially fulfilled amid growing trade tensions as the Trump administration brought the first round of China tariffs in March 2018. This was followed by the grounding of Boeing 737 MAX jetliners in response to two fatal crashes in October 2018 and March 2019, as well as a further souring of relations due to the COVID-19 pandemic that disrupted jet deliveries to Chinese airlines thereafter.

China also had turned to Boeing’s European competitor Airbus to order more jets, while touting its own progress with the production of its wide-body C939 airliner by the state-backed Commercial Aircraft Corp. of China.

A new deal could see Beijing recommit to buying more Boeing jets.

“It’s been a while since Boeing airplanes have been sold here in China,” Smith said. “We’d like to get that deal done. It’s good company, good product. Hope to get back to them selling airplanes to China.”

Need for ‘Lines of Communication’

Smith said the U.S. priority during the visit was to reestablish communications with Beijing in order to avoid unnecessary military escalation.

“I feel strongly that there has not been enough communication between leaders in the U.S. and leaders in China,” he said.

“We want to work to fix that problem, to open up the lines of communication and begin that dialogue.”

Perdue said: “One of the problems we’ve had is after COVID, we have not had a lot of interaction. And so this week is a great opportunity for us to open those doors and channels of communication.”

The visit, which began on Sept. 21, was made by a bipartisan delegation that also included Reps. Chrissy Houlahan (D-Pa.), Michael Baumgartner (R-Wash.), and Ro Khanna (D-Calif.). It marks the first House delegation to China since the COVID-19 pandemic, which saw U.S.–China relations deteriorate further because of the ruling Chinese Communist Party’s lack of cooperation and transparency to minimize damage from the deadly outbreak that started in the central Chinese city of Wuhan. The officials raised issues including a need for more military dialogue and action to curb the flow of fentanyl precursors to the United States.

The lawmakers met China’s second-ranking official, Li Qiang, on Sept. 21; economy tsar He Lifeng and Defense Minister Dong Jun on Sept. 22; and Foreign Minister Wang Yi on Sept. 23.

Boeing is one of the largest U.S. exporters and has historically sent about one-quarter of its planes to China. Perdue said that last week he visited Boeing’s plant in Tianjin, a city 95 miles southeast of the Chinese capital.

Trade Talks Continue

Trump on Sept. 19 spoke with Chinese leader Xi Jinping as the two nations looked to address trade tensions following Trump’s April announcement of tariffs on U.S. trading partners.

Since then, U.S. tariffs on China have been reduced from 145 percent to an average of 51.1 percent. At the time of the higher tariff rate, Trump said China had reneged on a deal to receive its orders of Boeing planes.

“Boeing should default China for not taking the beautifully finished planes that China committed to purchase,” the president said in a post on Truth Social in April. “This is just a small example of what China has done to the USA, for years. … And, by the way, Fentanyl continues to pour into our Country from China, through Mexico and Canada, killing hundreds of thousands of our people, and it better stop, now!”

Trump’s predecessor, President Joe Biden, also attempted to secure an aircraft order from China during the APEC summit in San Francisco in 2023, but that effort ended without a formal deal.

Boeing’s stocks rose by 2 percent on Sept. 23 upon news of an $8.5 billion deal with Uzbekistan Airways, as well as news of potential deals with China and Turkey. Share prices have fallen by nearly 8 percent this month after a five-month rally since April. They remain up by 25.8 percent since the start of the year.

Reuters contributed to this report.

Correction: A previous version of this article misspelled the name of U.S. Ambassador to China David Perdue. The Epoch Times regrets the error.