As Boeing's stock rises on a new foreign deal, US officials signal China
may be next to order planes
[September 24, 2025]
By RIO YAMAT
Boeing's stock climbed Tuesday after
the American aerospace giant announced a significant
jetliner order from Uzbekistan and as optimism builds
around a potentially larger aircraft sale to China.
David Perdue, the U.S. ambassador to China, said he
thinks negotiations over a possible deal involving
Boeing and China are likely in their “final” days or
weeks.
“This is a huge order, and it's very important to the
president, very important to Boeing,” Perdue said
Tuesday while visiting China with a group of U.S.
lawmakers. The ambassador did not give details on the
pending transaction.
Perdue's comments came a day after Boeing said that
Uzbekistan Airways would buy up to 22 of its 787
Dreamliners. The Central Asian nation's flag carrier
plans to acquire 14 of the widebody passenger planes and
reserved options for adding eight more to the order,
Boeing said.
Boeing said the purchase would help the airline expand
its international routes, including to the United
States, while also “supporting nearly 35,000 U.S. jobs.”
Boeing's stock price closed 2% higher on Tuesday,
bringing its gain for the year so far to 22.2%.
President Donald Trump, in a social media post Monday
evening, valued the Uzbekistan Airways deal at over $8
billion but erroneously said the order was for 22,787
planes.
Boeing declined to comment on Trump's Truth Social post
and referred questions to the White House. The White
House did not respond to multiple emailed requests from
The Associated Press seeking to clarify the numbers that
the president cited.
Meanwhile, the potential aircraft deal with China would
mark the first sale to the country in years. Although
Boeing was still delivering planes to China, its
business there plummeted in 2019, when the country
became the first to ground all 737 Max planes following
two crashes that killed 346 people less than five months
apart. Chinese airlines did not resume Max flights until
January 2023, much later than other carriers in other
countries.
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The Boeing logo is displayed at the company's factory, Sept. 24,
2024, in Renton, Wash. (AP Photo/Lindsey Wasson, File)
“It’s been a while since Boeing airplanes have been sold here in China,"
U.S. Rep. Adam Smith, the top Democrat on the House Armed Services
Committee, said in Beijing on Tuesday. “We’d like to get that deal
done.”
Boeing refused to comment on a potential order from China or Chinese
companies. The commercial and military aircraft maker has been seeking
to reverse its fortunes and public image after a calamitous 2024. In
January of last year, a panel called a door plug blew off a 737 Max
shortly after takeoff from Portland, Oregon.
In July, federal prosecutors revived a criminal fraud charge against the
company in connection with the deadly 737 Max crashes in 2018 and 2019.
A nearly eight-week strike by the machinists who assemble the 737 Max
and two other Boeing planes in Washington state halted production and
further dented the company's finances.
Since Trump returned to the White House this year, his administration
has made Boeing a focus of its plans to revive U.S. manufacturing.
Trump has said he would meet Chinese leader Xi Jinping at a regional
summit taking place at the end of October in South Korea and intends to
visit China in the “early part of next year,” following a lengthy phone
call between the two on Friday.
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