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President Trump has revealed that Chinese President Xi Jinping agreed to buy 200 Boeing jets during their meeting in Beijing.
Getting into it: During an interview with Fox News host Sean Hannity on Thursday, Trump said the deal landed higher than the 150 aircraft Boeing expected. Reuters and other outlets had been reporting in the run-up to the summit that the deal under discussion involved as many as 500 Boeing 737 Max jets, plus potential follow-on orders for pricier widebody planes. Boeing’s stock slid more than 4% in Thursday trading after the announced figure came in below those expectations.
“One thing he agreed to today, he’s going to order 200 jets. That’s a big thing. Boeing wanted 150, got 200,” Trump told Hannity.
The Chinese government has not publicly confirmed the Boeing order, but it’s notably smaller than the one from Trump’s 2017 visit to China, where Chinese officials agreed to a 300-jet deal with Boeing. That deal ultimately went to shit after the 737 Max crashes in 2018 and 2019 and the trade war that followed. In response, European rival Airbus began filling those orders and now dominates China’s market.
This all comes as the two leaders met for two hours and 15 minutes in Beijing and discussed trade, the Iran war, and the Strait of Hormuz. According to the White House readout, Xi agreed to buy American soybeans, oil, and liquefied natural gas on top of the Boeing jets, and committed to helping the US with Iran.
