The Chinese government is insisting on new conditions to the preliminary agreement that President Donald Trump reached with China’s leader Xi Jinping to purchase 200 Boeing aircraft — putting the high-profile deal at risk, according to three people familiar with the Trump administration’s thinking on negotiations.
Beijing has surprised the White House with demands for long-term guarantees on the supply of Boeing engine parts, bogging down negotiations, according to the three people. All were granted anonymity to discuss private deliberations.
The White House intends to raise the stalemate over the Boeing sale this week with visiting Chinese Vice Foreign Minister Ma Zhaoxu, the three people said.
“The Boeing deal is falling apart. They’re having a hard time with it,” said one of the people familiar with U.S. thinking on the talks.
The Boeing agreement was one of the few tangible outcomes of Trump’s Beijing summit with Xi in May, one which the White House touted as a major success. Delays or impediments to the agreement could sour the mutual effort by Beijing and Washington to maintain the fragile trade truce the two leaders reached in October.
The White House blames Beijing for the delay in finalizing the sale — valued at an estimated $17 billion to $19 billion — saying post-sale maintenance for those jets was not part of the initial understanding the two leaders reached, said another one of the people familiar with the U.S. thinking on negotiations. But there was no formal agreement out of the meeting, which increased the risk of disagreements on the terms of the sale.
“The sticking points are less about aircraft pricing than the long-term package around engines, spare parts, maintenance and servicing,” the person said. “China wants confidence that it won’t become dependent on a support relationship the U.S. could later restrict.”
The White House declined to comment. The Chinese Embassy and Boeing didn’t respond to requests for comment.
Trump heralded the Boeing purchase deal in May as the first step in what he said was Beijing’s pledge to buy a total of 750 aircraft. But the Chinese readout of the meeting made no mention of that larger order. China’s Commerce Ministry instead said at the time that the deal included provision of “adequate supply guarantees for engines and spare parts,” a detail that the White House hasn’t confirmed.
The White House also said at the time that the Chinese government had pledged to purchase $17 billion in U.S. agricultural commodities annually though 2028, which is prorated for 2026. But Beijing’s follow-through so far has been thin, something administration officials plan to raise with China’s foreign minister, the three people said.
Agriculture Department data shows China has so far booked roughly 1.3 million tons of soybeans from this fall’s harvest — the crop covered by its pledge to buy 25 million tons a year through 2028 — though the pace has picked up sharply in recent weeks, and Beijing continues taking heavy deliveries of last season’s crop. Those purchases may or may not count toward the pledge, which was never put in writing.
“The soybean buying only really picked up in the last couple weeks,” said the third person familiar with the U.S. thinking on negotiations, a former official close to the Trump administration. “Right now, people here are looking at what’s actually been delivered since Beijing and getting angry.”
China cut its usual multi-billion-dollar U.S. soybean purchases as part of its trade war with the U.S. last year. The White House views a resumption of those sales as key to maintaining support in Midwestern soybean-producing states of Illinois, Iowa, Minnesota, Nebraska and Indiana. Iowa in particular is home to a number of hotly contested races for the House as well as for an open Senate seat.
“Trump and his team want to see the beans finalized. China hasn’t placed the order,” said the second person familiar with the Trump administration’s thinking on negotiations.
The office of the U.S. Trade Representative did not respond to a request for comment.
Ali Wyne, a China expert at the nonprofit research organization International Crisis Group who frequently meets with Chinese officials, said the Chinese government sees strategic value in delaying approval of multi-billion-dollar purchases of Boeings and soybeans because it keeps Trump focused on maintaining stable U.S.-China ties as a way to ensure the deals go through.
“Chinese officials believe that Trump wants and needs to maintain a strong rapport with Xi more than the other way around, especially with an eye to avoiding a fresh economic rupture ahead of the U.S. midterms,” Wyne said. “So Xi doesn’t feel a strong sense of urgency to consummate those purchases.”