Good weekend, readers. President Trump and his gaggle of tech billionaires landed in China this past Wednesday, leaving all of us with bated breath on what travel-related news would come out of the visit.
Turns out, it was airplanes.
China is set to order 200 Boeing planes, the first order in nearly a decade. President Trump announced it Thursday in an interview with Fox News' Sean Hannity, dropping the news the way he tends to — casually, mid-conversation, with no accompanying press release.
"One thing he agreed to was he's gonna order 200 jets. That's a big thing, Boeings," Trump said, referring to Chinese President Xi Jinping. Trump didn't specify the aircraft type but added that Boeing CEO Kelly Ortberg "wanted 150, he got 200" jets. The White House and Boeing did not immediately respond to Skift's requests for comment.
As Skift's airline reporter Meghna Maharishi laid out this week, China hadn't placed an order with the plane maker in nearly a decade. Last year, tensions reached a new high when China told its national carriers not to place new Boeing orders following the Trump administration's tariff rollout. Talks have been quietly happening for months, with multiple outlets reporting Chinese interest in as many as 500 aircraft.
So 200 is, in the most technical sense, a compromise. But it's the kind of compromise Boeing has spent the better part of a decade hoping for.
It also caps a remarkable run. Qatar Airways ordered 210 widebody jets from Boeing in May 2025 — the biggest widebody order in the plane maker's history, dropped, as Trump Effect readers will recall, in the middle of Trump's Middle East tour. Korean Air announced a $36.5 billion agreement for 103 Boeing aircraft in August 2025. On Boeing's most recent earnings call, Ortberg teased what was coming: "I'm not going to give you the number of airplanes, but it's a big number." He wasn't kidding.
He was also generous with credit. "President Trump has been very focused on supporting us in international campaigns, and he's been very successful in doing that," Ortberg said on the call. "So I think that's a meaningful opportunity for us." Translation: the Trump Effect playbook is working. Show up, bring the CEO, leave with the order. Ortberg, as Meghna noted, was among the major U.S. executives to accompany Trump on the China trip.
All of which lands at a delicate moment for Boeing. The company is still mid-turnaround after a string of safety and quality incidents, including the 2024 Alaska Airlines blowout that led the FAA to cap 737 Max production. Ortberg has said Boeing is in the final stages of certifying the Max 7 and Max 10 — its two most anticipated aircraft, and presumably some of the 200 now heading east.
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