Companies Brace for the Return of Trump’s Old Trade Gripes

When Donald J. Trump repeatedly singled out the Japanese construction equipment maker Komatsu during his 2016 presidential campaign, employees at the company were taken aback.

He brought up the Tokyo-based maker of tractors, forklifts and bulldozers in interviews and during presidential debates — sometimes to make a point about the decline of U.S. manufacturing, and sometimes for no apparent reason. In one interview, Mr. Trump criticized the Affordable Care Act as being so expensive that it required people to “get hit by a Komatsu tractor” to meet the deductible.

At the time, Komatsu’s president brushed off the remarks, saying the company was grateful to Mr. Trump for helping to raise its global profile. After his improbable victory over Hillary Clinton, however, Komatsu took steps to ingratiate itself with the Trump White House.

In 2017, Komatsu spent about $2.8 billion to acquire an American company that made mining equipment. Since then, it has increased investments in North America, adding thousands of workers to its payroll and ramping up domestic production.

When Mr. Trump was campaigning again this year, Komatsu returned to his cross hairs. His criticism was the same: He said the company had an unfair advantage from a weak Japanese yen.

“Look at Komatsu and these tractor companies,” he said in a June interview with Bloomberg Businessweek. “Nobody wants to buy our product because it’s too expensive.”