Trump's Beijing visit puts Boeing aircraft deal back on the table

In a factory town in South Carolina, Boeing workers have spent the better part of a decade watching a market they once dominated slowly slip away. North Charleston builds the 787 Dreamliner, one of Boeing’s most sophisticated aircraft, but Chinese airlines have barely touched it since 2018. This month, those workers are waiting to see if Donald Trump’s second trip to Beijing will change that.

Trump’s China visit arrives at an unusually complicated moment. The ongoing US-Iran conflict has rattled global energy markets, sending oil prices into spasms and adding a new layer of tension to Washington’s already fraught relationship with Beijing. Against this backdrop, the prospect of a landmark aviation deal between the two largest economies is either a diplomatic masterstroke in the making, or wishful thinking dressed up in a business suit.

The numbers tell a stark story. Shanghai Airlines, a subsidiary of China Eastern Airlines, had built its fleet to 100 Boeing jets by 2018, the year after Trump’s first Beijing visit. The airline was on a genuine growth trajectory, its first 787 Dreamliner a symbol of expanding ambition. Then came COVID-19, the global grounding of the Boeing 737 Max following two fatal crashes, and a sharp deterioration in Sino-American relations. Today, Shanghai Airlines operates just 87 planes, all of them aging, and has placed no major new Boeing orders.

That freeze has held for nearly a decade. Chinese airlines that once bought Boeings in bulk have pivoted sharply toward Airbus, which ramped up its Tianjin assembly facility in China to capture exactly this opportunity. Comac, China’s own aircraft manufacturer, has been pushing its C919 narrowbody, but it remains largely unproven on international routes and years away from challenging either Western giant on widebodies.

So the question as Trump prepares for Beijing is simple: will he push for a marquee aviation deal, and will China say yes?

Why both sides have reason to want this

From Trump’s side, a Boeing deal would be hard to resist politically. North Charleston is Trump territory. The 787 production line is a jobs story that writes itself, and Trump has never been shy about trading policy wins for optics that play well at home. A headline announcing a Chinese order for a hundred Boeings would land as a concrete trade victory, the kind quantified in factory jobs and order books.

China’s calculus is different but not entirely opposite. Beijing has every reason to keep commercial aviation as a bargaining chip. But with the C919 not yet ready for heavy international use, and with Chinese carriers genuinely in need of new widebody aircraft to serve expanding international routes, the practical case for resuming Boeing purchases is real. The question is whether the political climate, especially with the US-Iran conflict stirring fresh geopolitical instability, allows China to hand Trump a visible win.

Where India fits in this picture

This might look like a story about American jobs and Chinese politics. It is not. For India, the Boeing-China standoff has had direct, measurable consequences, and any shift in it will ripple through Indian aviation fast.

Air India, after its privatisation by the Tata Group, signed one of the largest aircraft orders in commercial aviation history in 2023, covering more than 200 Boeing jets including 787 Dreamliners and 737 Max variants. IndiGo has a record order book. Akasa Air is queued behind it. Every one of these Indian carriers competes for delivery slots with airlines worldwide.

When Chinese airlines went absent from Boeing’s order book, Indian carriers quietly benefited. Boeing had more production capacity available, fewer competing claims on the assembly lines in South Carolina and Everett. If China re-enters the market with a large order, that equation shifts. Indian airlines waiting on Dreamliner deliveries should be watching this visit very closely.

There is a broader dimension too. The US-China aviation relationship is a proxy for the larger trade architecture that India is trying to navigate. India has positioned itself as a swing state in the great power competition between Washington and Beijing, benefiting from both sides’ eagerness to keep New Delhi in their respective orbits. A dramatic reset in US-China trade relations, of which a Boeing mega-deal would be a centrepiece, could change the terms on which India plays that role.

The US-Iran conflict complicates things further. India remains significantly dependent on West Asian energy supplies. Disruptions to oil flows through the region hit Indian consumers at the petrol pump and in electricity bills. If the Trump-Xi summit produces an outcome that eases global trade tensions more broadly, there is some benefit to energy market stability. But if the visit delivers only an aviation deal while the larger strategic friction between Washington and Beijing continues, the energy disruption story rolls on regardless.

The longer arc

Aviation deals of this scale are not negotiated in the margins of a state visit. The real work happens months in advance in trade offices and airline boardrooms. That work may or may not already be underway. The fact that the question is being raised publicly suggests some signals are being sent.

What is clear is that the decade-long freeze between China’s airlines and Boeing has hurt both sides. American workers lost orders and livelihoods. Chinese carriers aged their fleets and grew more dependent on a domestic manufacturer that is not yet ready for prime time. Neither outcome was planned. Neither is permanent.

If Trump returns from Beijing with a Boeing deal in hand, it will be sold as a trade win for the American heartland. The underlying reality is more complicated. A relationship as large and interconnected as the US-China one has its own gravitational pull, regardless of who is in the White House. Deals happen because they need to happen, not just because politicians shake hands.

For ordinary Indians watching this unfold, the most direct stake sits closer to home than it might appear. Whether the flight they book next year arrives on a new aircraft or an aging one, whether ticket prices rise as demand outstrips strained supply, whether Boeing can hold its delivery commitments to Indian carriers, all of that connects, in ways that are not always obvious, to what gets agreed in a meeting room in Beijing this month.