Boeing CEO Kelly Ortberg said Wednesday that he doesn’t expect the U.S. trade war with China to forestall the company’s financial recovery, nor prevent it from reaching aircraft delivery targets with Chinese airlines now refusing to accept Boeing planes.
Speaking on CNBC, Ortberg said that Boeing had three airplanes in China ready for delivery, but that two of them had been returned to Seattle so far because Beijing has stopped taking deliveries due to the dispute with the U.S.
While the company had planned to send about 50 airplanes to China this year, Ortberg said Boeing will be “pretty pragmatic” going forward.
“For those airplanes that haven’t been built yet, we’ll be looking to maybe redirect those to other customers,” he said. “For the airplanes that have been built, we call it remarketing. There’s plenty of customers out there looking for the Max aircraft.”
President Donald Trump announced sweeping tariffs on April 2 that triggered panic in the financial markets and generated recession fears, causing the U.S. president to quickly put a partial 90-day hold on the import taxes and increase his already steep tariffs against China to as much as 145%.
On Tuesday U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said in a speech that the ongoing tariffs showdown against China is unsustainable and he expects a “de-escalation” in the trade war between the world’s two largest economies.
Boeing reported its first-quarter financial results on Wednesday, posting an adjusted loss of 49 cents per share on revenue of $19.5 billion. The results topped the expectations of analysts surveyed by Zacks Investment Research, which called for a loss of $1.54 per share on revenue of $19.29 billion.
The company also significantly reduced its cash burn to approximately $2.29 billion from nearly $4 billion in the prior-year period.
Shares of Boeing, which is based in Arlington, Virginia, rose more than 6% in morning trading.