President Donald Trump met with leading drugmakers at the White House on Tuesday, jawboning them to produce their medications in the United States and to cut "astronomical" drug prices.

Trump also blasted foreign countries, which he said have been "freeloading" on the United States with price controls that limit what their own citizens can be charged for medications. And he vowed to use the purchasing power of the U.S. government, the world's largest drug purchaser, to push the price of medications down.

President Donald Trump meets with leaders of the pharmaceutical industry in the Oval Office at the White House in Washington, DC, on January 31, 2017. Nicholas Kamm | AFP | Getty Images

"We have to get the prices way down," Trump said. "We have to get lower prices, we have to get even better innovation, and I want you to move your companies back to the United States. I want you to manufacture in the United States." "You have to get your companies back here, we have to make products back" here, Trump said. Participants in the meeting included the CEOs of Merck, Amgen, Eli Lilly, Novartis and Johnson & Johnson, as well as the head of the trade group PhRMA.

Trump told them he wants to make it easier for pharmaceutical companies to win regulatory approval for their products. "You're going to get your prices either approved, or not approved," the president said. "But it's going to be a quick process. It's not going to take 15 years."