The union endorsed Mr. Trump during the election, and the union’s president, Brandon Judd, also served on Mr. Trump’s transition team.

Trump greets drug makers with a carrot and a stick

President Trump, who just weeks ago accused the pharmaceutical industry of “getting away with murder,” demanded on Tuesday that major drug companies lower their prices and return operations to the United States. But he vowed to help them by shredding regulations and leveling the playing field with foreign countries.

Mr. Trump gathered the heads of pharmaceutical companies in the Roosevelt Room for what has become a regular feature of his first days in the White House: a meeting with corporate leaders, at which the president holds forth on an pet issue for the television cameras.

On drug pricing, the president has aligned himself with Democrats, who have long argued that the government should be allowed to bargain for lower drug prices for Medicare and Medicaid, a position fought tooth and nail by Republicans. But Mr. Trump was diplomatic, at least for the cameras.

“The U.S. drug companies have produced extraordinary results for our country, but the pricing has been astronomical,” Mr. Trump said. “We have to get prices down for a lot of reasons.”

“We’re also going to be streamlining the process, so that, from your standpoint, when you have a drug, you can actually get it approved if it works, instead of waiting for many, many years,” he added.

Much of his message had to do with luring corporate investment back to the United States. He promised that the Food and Drug Administration would speed its approval of new drugs. And he said the United States would end “foreign freeloading,” which he described as countries devaluing their currencies to undercut the competitiveness of the American market.