boeing Chief Executive Officer Kelly Ortberg plans to accompany President Donald Trump on his trip to China next week, a person familiar with the company’s plans told CNBC on Thursday.
President Trump is currently scheduled to meet with Chinese President Xi Jinping in Beijing on May 14th and 15th.
In an earnings call late last month, Mr. Ortberg suggested that China could soon order a “large number” of Boeing planes, breaking a years-long drought for the company.
But Ortberg said any new agreement with China is “100% dependent” on the U.S.-China relationship, including the outcome of the Trump-Xi summit.
Boeing recently resumed deliveries of some planes to China after several years of suspension following two crashes of its 737 Max 8 planes in 2018 and 2019, but it has been nearly a decade since Chinese airlines placed large orders with Boeing.
But those airlines buy products from Airbus, Boeing’s main rival. China Southern Airlines has agreed to buy 137 Airbus A320 aircraft worth $21.4 billion at list price, according to a Shanghai Stock Exchange post last week.
Airbus’ orders from China, including the sale of China Southern Airlines from 2025 onwards, are worth about $55 billion at list price, the exchange said in a post.
In March, China was close to a deal to order up to 500 Boeing 737 Max jets, Bloomberg reported at the time.
The order was originally scheduled to be announced during President Trump’s visit to China, scheduled for late March or early April. However, Trump said his travel plans were postponed at the request of the United States in light of the Iran war that began on February 28.
The war has put new pressure on relations between Trump and Xi, raising concerns that the visit to China could be postponed again or canceled altogether.
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