By David Shepardson
Sept 21 (Reuters) – China is making progress on a commitment to buy 200 Boeing jets it announced in May, U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer said on Monday.
Greer gave no indication that any additional Chinese airplane orders for Boeing are near ahead of President Donald Trump’s meeting this week with Chinese President Xi Jinping.
“There are about 140 that are in a good state. There are an additional 10 that are they’re writing down the orders,” Greer told Fox News of the Boeing orders for Chinese carriers.
The orders marked Boeing’s first major Chinese deal in nearly a decade.
In May, Trump said China could potentially boost its Boeing order to as many as 750 planes.
Boeing CEO Kelly Ortberg last week played down some expectations among industry analysts that China could make another Boeing order around the Trump-Xi talks.
“I think there’ll be an increment of orders going forward,” Ortberg said at an investor conference. “They’re going to be announced by the airlines at their pace, however they want to announce those.”
Ortberg said in May that the 200 airplane order commitment by China was only an “initial tranche” of a potentially far bigger deal.
(Reporting by David Shepardson, Editing by Nick Zieminski and Alexander Smith)
