By Scott Hamilton

Aug. 21, 2025, © Leeham News: Boeing is nearing a massive order for up to 500 aircraft with China, Bloomberg reports. Completing the deal depends on political considerations, as so many of these do between China and the US for Boeing or Europe for Airbus airplanes.

Air China is the primary state airline of China. Boeing 737 MAX. Credit: CNBC.

But it’s significant that negotiations are active and appear nearing a deal if the politics can be worked out between the Chinese government and the Trump Administration. Boeing was frozen out by Beijing in 2017 when President Donald Trump, in his first term, began imposing tariffs on China in 2017.

President Biden, who took office in 2021, not only kept the Trump tariffs in place, economic and industrial sanctions were imposed when China covertly aligned itself with Russia following its 2022 invasion of Ukraine. When Trump was reelected in 2024, one of his first actions the following year was to impose more tariffs on China.

Even if the Boeing deal doesn’t successfully conclude soon, the very fact that serious negotiations and a near-deal validate LNA’s thesis since

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LNA’s analysis over the years concluded that China’s home-grown COMAC C919 could not fill the gap for the domestic demand for new airliners in the coming years created with the 2019 21-month grounding of the Boeing 737 MAX. China was the first to ground the aircraft after two fatal crashes of the MAX five months apart in 2018 and 2019. It was the last to un-ground the MAX after the Federal Aviation Administration recertified the airplane in November 2021.

Airbus can’t fill China’s need

Airbus, which assembles the A320/321neo in Tianjin, China, and delivers more from its facilities in Europe, also could not fill the Boeing gap. China does not yet manufacture widebody airplanes, and Airbus alone cannot fill the Chinese demand for this category airplane.

Hence: China needs Boeing, regardless of politics or domestic ambitions.

Throughout LNA’s advocacy that Boeing would see a return to receiving orders from China, readers and some analysts (who should have known better) believed that Boeing was through permanently in China.

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