Boeing aircraft deliveries to China will resume next month after transfers stopped in the middle of a commercial war with the Trump administration, CEO Kelly Ortberg said Thursday while discarding the impact of Tit-Forfor Tat tariffs with some of the largest commercial partners of the United States this year.
Ortberg had said last month that China had stopped deliveries.
“China has now indicated … they will take deliveries,” said Ortberg. The first installments will be next month, a Bernstein conference said Thursday.
Boeing, a better American exporter whose production production helps to soften the commercial deficit of the United States, has been paying tariffs on the components imported from Italy and Japan for their Dreamliner aircraft wide body, which are made in South Carolina, Ortberg said, and added that much of them can be collected when the plans are exported again.
“The only duties that we would have to cover would be the duties for a delivery, say, to an American airline,” he said.
Regarding commercial policies that change rapidly that have included several pauses and some exemptions, Ortberg said: “Personally, I don’t think this is … permanent in the long term.”
He reiterated that Boeing plans to increase production this year of his best selling 737 Max Jet, which will require the approval of the Federal Aviation Administration.
The FAA limited the production of the battle horse airplanes at 38 per month last year after a door cap that was not secured when it left the Boeing factory exploded in the air in the first minutes of a Alaska Airlines flight.
Ortberg said the company could produce 42 maximum airplanes a month in the middle of the year and evaluate moving up to 47 per month approximately half a year later.
The Max 7 and Max 10 variants of the company, the largest and smallest aircraft of the narrow body family, are scheduled to be certified by the end of the year, he said.
Many executives of the airlines have applauded Ortberg’s leadership since he took reins in Boeing last August, in charge of detecting years of losses and final reputation and security crisis, including the impact of two fatal accidents of Max.
The CEOs have long complained about the delays in the delivery of the company that left them less aircraft during a post-pandemic travel boom.
“I think Boeing has folded the corner,” said United Airlines, Scott Kirby, “Squawk Box” of CNBC on Thursday. He said that the problems of the supply chain are limiting the deliveries of new aircraft in general.
“We order the planes believing that the supply chain would be challenged,” he said.
