Donald Trump Strikes Conciliatory Tone in Meeting With Tech Executives

Prominent Silicon Valley executives meet with president-elect in a high-profile summit.

President-elect Donald Trump struck a conciliatory tone at the start of a high-profile meeting with top tech executives Wednesday, telling Silicon Valley leaders that his goal is “to help you folks do well.”

“We want you to keep going with the incredible innovation. There’s nobody like you in the world.…Anything we can do to help this go along, we’re going to be there for you,” he told the tech executives, according to a video of the start of the meeting. “You call my people, you call me. It doesn’t make any difference. We have no formal chain of command around here.”

Mr. Trump also told the executives that he would “do fair-trade deals” and said he was “going to make it a lot easier for you to trade across borders because there are a lot of restrictions, a lot of problems.” He added, “If you have any ideas on that, that would be great.” Mr. Trump has been a persistent critic of past trade deals, including the pending Trans Pacific Partnership.

Thirteen tech executives attended the meeting at Trump Tower:

The meeting could help set the tone for relations between the tech industry and a president it views warily. Few in Silicon Valley supported Mr. Trump during the campaign, and he has hinted at policies that worry many big tech firms, such as trade restrictions, stricter immigration policy and tougher antitrust enforcement.

Any tensions between the two sides weren’t visible at the start of the meeting, when everyone at the large rectangular table went around and introduced themselves.

Mr. Bezos, who sparred with Mr. Trump during the campaign, said he was “super excited about the possibility that this can be the innovations administration.”

Palantir CEO Alex Karp said, “I hope we can help bolster our national security.” The data-mining software company, in which Mr. Thiel is an investor, counts many federal agencies as customers.

Ms. Sandberg said she was “excited to talk about jobs.”

The jobs discussion could also put the tech giants on the defensive. Apple, Alphabet, Amazon, Microsoft and Facebook are five of the nation’s seven most-valuable companies and together employ roughly 600,000 workers. But they employ fewer people—particularly in the U.S.—than many less-valuable firms. Wal-Mart Stores Inc., for instance, employs 1.5 million people in the U.S. alone. Mr. Trump has criticized Apple, among others, for making nearly all of its products overseas.

The Trump transition team, meanwhile, said it has added prominent Silicon Valley executives to a separate group that will advise the president-elect on business and economic policy. The President’s Strategic and Policy Forum initially included only one tech executive, Ms. Rometty of IBM.

On Wednesday, the transition team said it added Mr. Musk and Uber Technologies Inc. CEO Travis Kalanick, along with PepsiCo chief Indra Nooyi, to the group.

Mr. Cook of Apple and Mr. Musk of Tesla are scheduled to stay at Trump Tower after the meeting to meet privately with Mr. Trump.

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