BEIJING (Reuters) -Boeing delivered on Wednesday the first of two 777 freighters ordered by China’s Suparna Airlines, the U.S. planemaker said on Thursday via its official WeChat account.
It marks the first new-build freighter handed to a Chinese carrier since the U.S.-China tariff war began.
Nearly 60 Boeing 777 freighters are already flying at six Chinese carriers, the planemaker says.
Beijing blocked Boeing jet deliveries in retaliation for tariffs the United States imposed on China earlier this year. That restriction was later eased after Washington and Beijing struck a temporary tariff truce.
On Tuesday, a group of U.S. lawmakers on a rare visit to Beijing said that they had raised a deal with top Chinese leaders which would see China commit to buy more Boeing jets.
Boeing is in talks to sell as many as 500 jets to China, Bloomberg reported last month. That would represent a major breakthrough for the company in the world’s second-largest aviation market, where orders have stalled amid the trade tensions.
Asked about fresh purchases of Boeing jets on Thursday, China’s Commerce Ministry spokesman He Yadong told reporters in Beijing that “unilateral U.S. restrictive measures” remained the biggest barrier to normal trade cooperation.
(Reporting by Sophie Yu and Lisa Barrington. Editing by Mark Potter)
