Qatar moves to purchase $200 billion in Boeing jets

On the second day of President Donald Trump's Gulf States excursion, Qatar signed a deal to purchase 160 aircraft, marking one of the largest orders in Boeing's history. 

This comes at a time when Boeing's corporate and product issues have plagued expansion and even existing contracts with the United States government. 

On May 11, news outlets reported that Qatar intended to gift a Boeing 747-8 to President Donald Trump. Amid the controversy, press secretary Karoline Leavitt clarified that the plane was in fact a gift to the United States Department of Defense and that any gift to the United States is done with full transparency and compliance with applicable laws. 

Boeing's safety and quality concerns date back to two highly-publicized tragedies: 737 Max crashes in both 2018 and 2019 that killed a collective 346 people. In January of 2024, a mid-air door plug blowout on an Alaska Airlines 737 MAX 9 attracted social media attention and in December of 2024, a Jeju Air 737-800 crashed in South Korea, killing 179 people. 

As a result, public trust has nearly evaporated. That, in addition to supply chain bottlenecks that have stymied progress in increasing 737 MAX output and wing system installation, the reported manufacturing output dropped from 38 to 31 aircraft per month earlier this year. 

Weighing acceptance of Qatar's valuable gift in the face of backlash, Trump highlighted the contrast between the United States' executive form of travel and other countries: “And when you land and you see Saudi Arabia, and you see UAE, and you see Qatar, and they have these brand new Boeing 747s, mostly. And you see ours next to it. This is like a totally different plane. It’s much smaller. It’s much less impressive, as impressive as it is,” Trump told Fox News’ Sean Hannity.