U.S. Slows Jet Parts to Squeeze China’s Flying Fleets

The U.S. Commerce Department has slowed export licenses for airplane parts bound for China and capped how many can go to COMAC. Officials are turning a routine paperwork channel into a trade lever over rare earths.

A draft rule would make it easier to restrict landing gear and aviation hydraulic fluid, including fluid from suppliers such as ExxonMobil. After Xi Jinping met President Donald Trump in Washington in late September 2026, the two sides extended a trade truce to January 10, 2027. Rare earths were not settled.

Washington Has Started Slowing the Licenses

People familiar with the work say Commerce is positioning itself to raise pressure on Beijing if the White House asks. The slowdown is not a published ban. It is a quieter mix of delay, quantity limits, and a rule still on paper.

HOW THE SQUEEZE IS BEING APPLIED

• License pace: Export licensing for airplane parts bound for China has been slowed in recent weeks.
• COMAC caps: The number of parts licensed for China’s state planemaker is being limited so the firm cannot stockpile.
• Draft rule: Officials have looked at a regulation that would make it easier to restrict landing gear and other aircraft parts, with a new license on aviation hydraulic fluid in one draft.

Commerce and the White House did not immediately comment. The Chinese embassy in Washington also did not comment on this round. After U.S. export limits last year, an embassy spokesperson accused Washington of abusing export controls.

U.S. and Chinese officials met in New York and Washington in September 2026 on rare earth access, farm trade, and advanced AI. Aerospace had been mostly spared Trump’s tariff lists, but parts and materials have been short for other reasons, including Chinese controls on rare earths used in thermal coating sprays that protect jet engines.

Spare Parts for 200 Boeing Jets

COMAC is the political target. The operational hostage is the fleet already flying.

Access to U.S.-made parts is critical for Boeing and Airbus jets at Chinese carriers, as well as for COMAC. China has asked for several years of spare parts for 200 Boeing jets it agreed to buy last spring, in what would be Boeing’s first major Chinese order in nearly a decade. U.S. officials have been reluctant to give those guarantees, seeing the parts as leverage for later concessions. It is unclear where that request stands.

China’s commerce ministry said in May 2026 that the United States would provide supply guarantees for aircraft engine parts and components under the Boeing deal. Planes are not generally sold with parts guarantees. Trump, after the Beijing visit, said purchases could rise to as many as 750 jets fitted with GE Aerospace engines. Boeing chief executive Kelly Ortberg called the 200-plane commitment an initial tranche to be firmed up later in 2026.

Consistent with US export requirements, Boeing is committed to supporting Chinese airlines with the parts and services they need as we have done for decades.

Boeing spokesperson

Chris Raymond, chief executive of Boeing Global Services, said on June 6, 2026 that China could get aftermarket parts for the order “if it’s a part that we’re allowed to sell globally,” and that Boeing has a parts warehouse in the country. In October 2025, Trump said the United States could put export controls on Boeing plane parts in reply to Chinese rare earth limits. Holding back those spares may push Chinese airlines to shop for a homegrown jet. It also reminds them that Western support can be switched off, which is only a substitute if that homegrown jet can fly without the same licenses.

Why the C919 Still Needs U.S. Parts

COMAC’s C919 is sold as China’s answer to the Boeing 737 and the Airbus A320 family. Its propulsion still runs through Cincinnati and Paris. CFM International, the 50/50 joint company of GE Aerospace and Safran Aircraft Engines, designed the only Western engine offered on the C919, the LEAP-1C, with a maximum takeoff thrust of 31,000 pounds and about 15% lower fuel use than the prior generation.

A Center for Strategic and International Studies tally of major C919 components lists 48 U.S. names among major C919 suppliers, against 26 in Europe and 14 in China. Honeywell supplies fly-by-wire controls, the auxiliary power unit, air data and inertial reference units, and wheels and carbon brakes. Collins Aerospace supplies weather radar, cabin management, ice detectors, and lighting. Parker Aerospace supplies hydraulic systems and fuel tanks, in some cases through a China joint venture.

WHO BUILDS THE C919’S HARDWARE

That table is why a license delay is not like a tariff on a commodity. Certified engines, flight controls, and hydraulics cannot be swapped for a new vendor without tests and new approvals. IBA, the aviation consultancy, said about 15 C919s were delivered in 2025 against an initial target of 75, with the shortfall tied in part to the temporary U.S. license freeze on LEAP-1C engines. Air China, China Eastern Airlines, and China Southern Airlines, in their fiscal 2025 reports, pointed to a combined 33 C919 deliveries in 2026. Fleet records show China Eastern operating 17 of the type.

The Draft Rule Names Hydraulic Fluid

The items in the draft are broader than COMAC’s factory in Shanghai. Landing gear on the C919 comes from Liebherr LAMC Aviation in Changsha, a joint venture of Liebherr-Aerospace and AVIC, not from a U.S. plant. A U.S. rule that makes landing gear easier to restrict would bite first on Boeing and Airbus jets that Chinese airlines already fly, which carry U.S. and other Western gear and need licensed spares for decades.

Hydraulic fluid is the other tell. One draft would add a license requirement on aviation hydraulic fluid shipped by U.S. suppliers such as ExxonMobil. Fluid is consumed in maintenance. It is also hard to stockpile in secret at the scale of a national fleet. Parker already sits on the C919’s hydraulic system. A fluid license would reach any operator that still buys American, not only the state planemaker.

Safran’s own map of the C919 still lists nacelles, FADEC controls, and cabin systems alongside the LEAP-1C, plus wiring made at a Shanghai joint venture with COMAC. Even a jet assembled in China keeps asking U.S. and French plants for permission to stay airworthy.

The Spring Freeze Taught COMAC to Stockpile

This is the second pass at the same lever. In late spring 2025, as the tariff fight moved into supply chains, the United States suspended licenses for GE Aerospace jet engines, Honeywell Aerospace navigation systems, and other parts for COMAC. It also sent letters to makers of hydraulic fluid used in airplanes in China, saying the fluid needed a new export license. That fluid rule did not last.

THE LICENSE FIGHT SINCE 2025

1. April 4, 2025: China tightens export controls on seven rare earths, including dysprosium and terbium, and related magnet materials.
2. Late spring 2025: The United States suspends licenses for GE engines, Honeywell navigation gear, and other COMAC parts, and briefly puts aviation hydraulic fluid under a new license.
3. July 3, 2025: Commerce tells GE Aerospace it can restart LEAP-1C shipments for the C919 and CF34 shipments for the C909 regional jet.
4. October 2025: Trump says the United States could control Boeing plane parts; China expands rare earth rules, then suspends that expansion after talks in Busan.
5. May 2026: After Trump’s visit to Beijing, China confirms a 200-jet Boeing buy and says Washington will guarantee engine-part supply.
6. Late September 2026: Xi and Trump meet in Washington and extend the trade truce to January 10, 2027.
7. October 1, 2026: People familiar with Commerce describe slower airplane-part licenses, COMAC quantity caps, and a draft covering landing gear and hydraulic fluid.

The 2025 aerospace limits lasted only a few weeks, and they sat beside similar pauses on ethane and chip-design software. COMAC had a reason after that to order ahead. Quantity caps are the reply to that lesson. They try to keep the lever loaded without publishing a new ban.

Jet Engines Still Need Chinese Rare Earths

The counter-lever in this fight is not abstract. A Council on Foreign Relations report on Beijing’s material controls traces export controls on gallium, rare earths, and magnets from 2023 through 2026, and notes that the April 4, 2025 rare earth measures were not reversed. The October 9, 2025 expansion, which would have added five more elements and a 0.1% extraterritorial test, was postponed, then rolled into the truce that now runs to January 10, 2027.

Producers of thermal coating sprays used to protect jet engines have kept struggling with those Chinese controls. The same engines Washington can license, or slow, still depend on materials Beijing can license, or slow.

CHINA’S SHARE OF THE ROCKS

• Mine output: USGS figures put China’s 270,000 tonnes of rare earth mine output in 2025, or 69.2% of a 390,000-tonne world total.
• U.S. mines: The United States produced 51,000 tonnes, or 13.1% of world output, the next-largest national total in that survey.
• U.S. imports: For 2021 through 2024, China supplied 71% of U.S. imports of rare-earth compounds and metals.
• April rules: USGS notes that the April 2025 export controls remained in effect at the end of 2025, even after China began issuing general licenses to selected exporters.

Magnets and coatings are not the same as a landing-gear truck, but they sit in the same aircraft. Each capital is squeezing a bottleneck the other cannot rebuild in a quarter. USGS and the CFR paper both treat that imbalance as a years-long industrial problem, not a paperwork delay.

Homegrown Substitutes Cannot Clear Certification Yet

China is trying to make the lever expire. The Aero Engine Corporation of China is developing the CJ-1000A as a domestic stand-in for the LEAP-1C. That engine is still under test. Industry accounts in 2026 also described work to replace Western sealants, rubber, paints, bolts, and cleaning agents on the C919, a much easier layer than engines or fly-by-wire computers.

Shaun Rein, founder of the China Market Research Group, wrote that weaponizing Boeing parts would force airlines to turn to COMAC, the same pattern he sees when other U.S. chokepoints get used as tools. The C919 only becomes that escape if it can take passengers without a U.S. license for the next engine, the next APU, or the next drum of hydraulic fluid. Until the CJ-1000A is certified and the avionics stack is replaced, a slower license queue still parks metal.

WHAT WE KNOW

• The paperwork: Airplane-part licenses to China have been slowed, and COMAC’s licensed quantities have been limited to block stockpiling.
• The draft: A text circulating among officials would add a hydraulic-fluid license and make landing gear easier to restrict.
• The last freeze: Engine and avionics licenses for COMAC were suspended in late spring 2025 and restored on July 3, 2025, after a few weeks.

WHAT IS UNCONFIRMED

• The rule: Commerce has not issued the landing-gear and hydraulic-fluid regulation, and has not said it will.
• The 200 jets: China’s request for years of Boeing spares has no public answer, and the order itself was still being firmed up after May 2026.
• The next cutoff: There is no public list of denied licenses, only accounts of slower approvals and smaller batches.

Negotiators now have until January 10, 2027, to settle the harder files, including rare earths, while airplane-part licenses are already moving slower than they were a month earlier.