US President-elect Donald Trump says he expects to have most members of his cabinet announced next week, interviewing more candidates at Trump Tower for top jobs in his administration as he prepares to take office on January 20.
Trump is still weighing who to choose as secretary of state. The Republican president-elect said on Thursday he had chosen retired Marine Corps General James Mattis as defence secretary and would make a formal announcement on that on Monday.
"We have tremendous people joining the cabinet and beyond the cabinet. You'll be seeing almost all of them next week," Trump said in an interview that aired on Friday on Fox News.
Even without his full foreign policy team in place, Trump had more phone calls with foreign leaders, breaking tradition by taking a call from Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen, the first such contact by a president-elect since President Jimmy Carter adopted a one-China policy in 1979.
Trump also invited Philippines leader Rodrigo Duterte to the White House next year during a "very engaging, animated" phone conversation, according to a Duterte aide.
A statement issued by Trump's transition team made no mention of an invitation.
Domestically, Trump plans to move quickly after taking office on his goals to overhaul taxation, healthcare and immigration laws, Vice President-elect Mike Pence said in an interview published by the Wall Street Journal on Friday.
Top priorities include curbing illegal immigration, abolishing and replacing President Barack Obama's signature healthcare program and filling a vacancy on the Supreme Court, Pence told the newspaper.
Asked what he would do on his first day in office, Trump told Fox News he may address his campaign pledge to build a wall on the southern border with Mexico, though he did not go into specifics.
"We could do the wall, we're going to do some repealing, we're going to do some executive orders that we think are inappropriate," Trump told Fox, referring to the possibility of reversing executive orders issued by Obama during his eight-year term.
On Friday Trump named an advisory panel led by the chief executive of Blackstone, the world's biggest alternative asset manager, stacked with executives from some of the country's largest companies, such as Wal Mart, Boeing and IBM.
On Thursday he claimed success in persuading Carrier Corp, an Indiana an air conditioner maker, to keep about 1000 jobs in the United States rather than move them to Mexico. But that drew criticism from former Republican vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin, a Trump supporter.
"When government steps in arbitrarily with individual subsidies, favouring one business over others, it sets inconsistent, unfair, illogical precedent," she wrote in an opinion piece on the Young Conservatives website youngcons.com.
"Instead, we support competition on a level playing field, remember? Because we know special interest crony capitalism is one big fail," she wrote.
The Wall Street Journal reported that Trump had an investment of up to $US250,000 ($A334,775) in 2014 in United Technologies Corp, the parent company of Carrier.
Trump is weighing who to put in charge of the Department of Homeland Security, which enforces immigration law and plays a key role in preventing terror attacks; a director of national intelligence; and several cabinet posts dealing with energy and the environment.
North Dakota Senator Heidi Heitkamp was among invitees to Trump Tower in New York this week, and news of a meeting between her and Trump on Fridayaroused immediate speculation that she might be a candidate for a position such as energy secretary.
Heitkamp, a Democrat in her first term, said she spoke with Trump for more than an hour about energy, agriculture and Interior Department issues.
Trump has narrowed the field for secretary of state to four candidates, including the 2012 Republican presidential nominee, Mitt Romney, who attacked Trump throughout the 2016 campaign but spoke glowingly of the president-elect after having dinner with him earlier this week.
"There was actually good chemistry," Trump said on Fox.
