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Shares in Boeing slid after Donald Trump announced that China had purchased 200 planes, following speculation of a possible “mega order” during the US president’s summit with Chinese leader Xi Jinping.
A Chinese purchase of US-made planes was among the deals being most closely watched by investors during Trump’s two-day visit to Beijing, as well as possible progress in areas including agriculture, rare earths and semiconductors.
The US aerospace group’s shares closed 4.7 per cent lower on Thursday following Trump’s statement to Fox News.
China has not officially commented on the deal. Boeing did not release any comment either.
Trump and Xi held a two-hour bilateral discussion on Thursday followed by a tour of Beijing’s 15th-century Temple of Heaven and a state banquet. The two presidents are scheduled to meet over tea and lunch on Friday before Trump departs for the US.
Trump has been accompanied on his trip by a delegation of business leaders including Tesla and SpaceX boss Elon Musk, Apple chief executive Tim Cook and Nvidia head Jensen Huang, as well as Boeing’s Kelly Ortberg.
Xi told the groups on Thursday that China’s door to business “will only open wider and wider” but gave no specific measures.
The Boeing deal was the first disclosed during the trip, and there has been no announcement on changes to US export controls on sales of chips to China or Chinese curbs on American access to rare earths, priorities for both sides.
In the same interview with Fox News broadcast on Friday, Trump said China has agreed to expand purchases of US farm products and oil and gas.
“One thing I think that we’re going to make a deal on, they’ve agreed they want to buy oil from the United States,” Trump said. “We’re going to start sending Chinese ships to Texas, and to Louisiana, and to Alaska . . . that’s a big thing.”
Jamieson Greer, Trump’s trade representative, said that, beyond the Boeing sale and an earlier soyabean deal covering 25mn tonnes of purchases a year, the US expected China’s annual purchases of American agricultural products to expand by “double digit billion [dollar]” over the next three years.
“We’re in a situation where we are trying to rebalance our trade with China; we’ve had a lot of success in that,” Greer told Bloomberg television in an interview on Friday.
One senior American business leader based in China, who asked not to be named, said the broader trade stabilisation, alongside the purchasing deals, would be welcomed by the business community.
But he said companies need “further clarity” on the timeline of the deals, as well as any progress on China easing rare earth export controls and other regulations.
On the eve of Trump’s trip, analysts from Jefferies, the investment bank, said that Boeing had been negotiating a “mega order” with China for up to 500 aircraft.
Beijing’s most recent significant purchase from the US aircraft manufacturer came during Trump’s latest trip to China in November 2017, covering 300 planes valued at more than $37bn.
Additional reporting by Tina Hu in Beijing and Christian Davies in New York
