By Jack Nicas and Rolfe Winkler 

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

"We want you to keep going with the incredible innovation... Anything we can do to help this go along we're going to be there for you," he told the tech executives, according to video of the start of the meeting. "You call my people, you call me. It doesn't make any difference."

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." Mr. Trump has been a persistent critic of past trade deals, including the pending Trans Pacific Partnership.

At the meeting, Mr. Trump was flanked by Vice President-elect Mike Pence and billionaire investor Peter Thiel, who is advising the president-elect. Tech executives present included Alphabet Inc. Chief Executive Larry Page, Apple Inc. CEO Tim Cook and Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella.

About a dozen executives were scheduled to attend the meeting. The attendee list is a Who's Who of tech, including Amazon.com Inc. CEO Jeff Bezos, Facebook Inc. Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg, Tesla Motors Inc. CEO Elon Musk, and chairman of Google parent Alphabet Inc. Eric Schmidt, people familiar with the plans said.

The CEOs of Intel Corp., International Business Machines Corp., Oracle Corp., Cisco Systems Inc. and Palantir Technologies Inc. are also expected to attend, the people said.

Mr. Trump is expected to emphasize job creation and making government more efficient. Following the meeting, the president-elect is expected to talk with Messrs. Cook and Musk in separate one-on-one sessions.

Several CEOs declined to comment as they arrived for the meeting, including Messrs. Bezos and Krzanich and IBM's Ginni Rometty. Vice President-elect Mike Pence, said "I know the president-elect is looking forward to welcoming some of the leading tech CEOs in America to Trump Tower to talk about how we can grow jobs in high-tech all across the country."

Tech lobbyists, lawyers and analysts say the companies' principal goal is preserving the status quo. The past eight years under President Barack Obama have been an era of tremendous growth and record profits for Silicon Valley, aided by favorable federal policies, such as free trade, relatively weak antitrust enforcement and net neutrality, a policy that requires internet providers to treat all web traffic equally.

But Mr. Trump and his team have hinted at changes that worry many big tech firms, such as trade restrictions, stricter immigration policy and tougher antitrust enforcement.

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.

Wednesday's meeting was brokered by billionaire tech investor Peter Thiel and Mr. Trump's son-in-law and adviser Jared Kushner. Their presence at the meeting could help smooth relations between Mr. Trump and tech companies he has scolded.

Mr. Thiel -- among the few prominent tech titans who backed Mr. Trump -- was the first outside investor in Facebook and is now a board member there. He is a former business partner and friend of Mr. Musk. He could serve as an advocate for the tech industry, particularly on subjects like entrepreneurism and antitrust enforcement.

Mr. Kushner and his wife, Mr. Trump's daughter Ivanka, have also sought counsel in tech circles on how the administration can work with the industry, according to people familiar with the matter.

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.

Write to Jack Nicas at jack.nicas@wsj.com and Rolfe Winkler at rolfe.winkler@wsj.com

 

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

December 14, 2016 15:13 ET (20:13 GMT)

Copyright (c) 2016 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.
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