Boeing CEO Kelly Ortberg said Wednesday that he doesn’t expect the U.S. trade war with China to forestall the company’s financial recovery, nor prevent it from reaching aircraft delivery targets with Chinese airlines now refusing to accept Boeing planes.
Speaking on CNBC, Ortberg said that Boeing had three airliners in China ready for delivery but brought two of them back to Seattle so far because the Chinese airlines that ordered the planes “stopped taking delivery of aircraft due to the the tariff environment.”
Beijing increased its import tax on American goods to 125% this month in retaliation for U.S. President Donald Trump raising the tariff on products made in China to 145%. China’s tariff would more than double the cost of passenger jets that Boeing, the U.S.’ largest exporter, sells for tens of millions of dollars.
While the company had planned to complete 50 orders for Chinese airlines this year, Ortberg said Boeing was “actively assessing” options for diverting those jetliners to other interested buyers.
“It’s an unfortunate situation, but we have many customers who want near-term deliveries, so we plan to redirect the supply to the stable demand, and we’re not going to continue to build aircraft for customers who will not take them,” he said during a conference call with analysts.