Boeing Co. 737 Max fuselages at the corporate’s manufacturing facility in Renton, Washington, on April 15, 2025.
Bloomberg | Bloomberg | Getty Images
Boeing‘s airplane deliveries to China will resume next month after handovers were paused amid a trade war with the Trump administration, CEO Kelly Ortberg said Thursday, as he brushed off the impact of tit-for-tat tariffs with a number of the United States’ largest trading partners this 12 months.
Ortberg had said last month that China had paused deliveries.
“China has now indicated … they’ll take deliveries,” Ortberg said. The primary deliveries shall be next month, he told a Bernstein conference on Thursday.
Boeing, a top U.S. exporter whose output of airplanes helps soften the U.S. trade deficit, has been paying tariffs on imported components from Italy and Japan for its wide-body Dreamliner planes, that are made in South Carolina, Ortberg said, adding that much of it will possibly be recouped when the planes are exported again.
“The one duties that we’d should cover could be the duties for a delivery, say, to a U.S. airline,” he said.
Regarding the rapidly changing trade policies which have included several pauses and a few exemptions, Ortberg said, “I personally don’t think these shall be … everlasting in the long run.”
He reiterated that Boeing plans to ramp up production this 12 months of its best-selling 737 Max jet, which is able to require Federal Aviation Administration approval.
The FAA capped output of the workhorse planes at 38 a month last 12 months after a door plug that wasn’t secured when it left Boeing’s factory blew out midair in the primary minutes of an Alaska Airlines flight.
Ortberg said the corporate could produce 42 Max jets a month by midyear and assess moving as much as 47 a month about half a 12 months later.
The corporate’s long-delayed Max 7 and Max 10 variants, the most important and smallest planes within the narrow-body family, are scheduled to be certified by the top of the 12 months, he said.
Many airline executives have applauded Ortberg’s leadership since he took the reins at Boeing last August, tasked with stemming years of losses and ending reputational and safety crises, including the impact of two fatal Max crashes.
CEOs have long complained about delivery delays from the corporate that left them wanting planes during a post-pandemic travel boom.
“I do think Boeing has turned the corner,” United Airlines CEO Scott Kirby told CNBC’s “Squawk Box” earlier Thursday. He said supply chain problems are limiting deliveries of recent planes overall.
“We over-ordered aircraft believing the provision chain could be challenged,” he said.
