Boeing CEO Kelly Ortberg is set to travel to China with President Donald Trump next week, as the two countries move closer to what could be Boeing's largest aircraft order in nearly a decade, sources told CNBC on Thursday.
Citigroup CEO Jane Fraser has also been invited on the trip and plans to go, according to a person familiar with the matter. Trump is currently scheduled to meet with Chinese President Xi Jinping in Beijing on May 14 and 15. Both executives spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss plans that had not been made public.
The trip comes as Boeing waits on a deal that has been in the works for months. In March, Bloomberg reported that China was closing in on an agreement to order up to 500 of Boeing's 737 Max jets, with the announcement timed to coincide with Trump's China visit. That trip was originally scheduled for late March and early April but was delayed at the U.S. government's request following the outbreak of war with Iran on Feb. 28.
Ortberg said on an earnings call late last month that China could soon place an order for a "big number" of Boeing planes, breaking a yearslong drought for the company. He added that any new deal with China is "100% dependent" on U.S.-Chinese relations, including the outcome of the Trump-Xi summit.
The stakes for Boeing are significant. It has been almost a decade since Chinese airlines made a large order with the company, and Boeing's main rival Airbus has been filling that vacuum aggressively. China Southern Airlines agreed last week to buy 137 Airbus A320 aircraft valued at $21.4 billion at list prices, according to a post on the Shanghai Stock Exchange. Airbus orders from China since 2025 are worth about $55 billion at list prices, the post said, though final prices were not disclosed and airlines generally receive discounts for large orders.
Boeing's relationship with China has been complicated by the 737 Max crashes of 2018 and 2019, which killed 346 people. China was the first country to ground the jet after the second crash in 2019, and it took years before deliveries resumed. The company has since been working to ramp up production of the updated narrow-body Max as well as its wide-body 787 Dreamliner, after a prolonged period of safety and manufacturing crises.
CNBC's Jim Cramer investment club noted Thursday that Boeing shares were trading higher even as the broader market retreated from record highs. The S&P 500 pulled back Thursday afternoon after the Wall Street Journal reported Saudi Arabia and Kuwait lifted restrictions on U.S. military use of their bases and airspace, adding uncertainty to negotiations over the Strait of Hormuz. West Texas Intermediate crude climbed back above $97 per barrel by midday.
The Iran war has added a layer of risk to the China trip itself. China is the world's largest buyer of oil and gas from the Persian Gulf, and energy flows through the Strait of Hormuz have slowed sharply since the conflict began. Concerns that the summit could be delayed or canceled again are not entirely off the table.
Cramer's team argued that even a widely anticipated Boeing-China deal is not yet fully priced into the stock. They pointed to Boeing shares selling off hard just last week when Airbus secured its China Southern order, which they said shows the market still holds doubt about whether a Boeing deal will materialize. Fraser's inclusion in the delegation reflects Citigroup's longstanding presence in China, where it has operated since 1902 and does not offer retail banking, but has seen renewed investor interest in the market in recent months.
The summit, if it proceeds as planned, would mark one of the highest-profile U.S.-China business meetings in years, with implications not just for Boeing and Citigroup but for the broader trajectory of trade relations between the two countries.
