None of the companies targeted by Trump acknowledged hiring outside consultants to deal with his criticism. Many declined to comment for this story.
Avoiding The Mud
"You're not going to win in a one-on-one confrontation with Donald Trump. You're just going to get mired in the mud," said Juda Engelmayer, senior vice president for crisis management at 5W Public Relations in New York.
Those who have been willing to engage, including Ford Chairman Bill Ford, have avoided getting too personal.
Trump has railed against Ford for manufacturing vehicles in Mexico, threatening a tariff of up to 40 percent on "every car, bumper and part" entering the United States from Mexico.
Ford, the great-grandson of the automaker's founder Henry Ford, called Trump's critique "distorted" and said the company instead should be "held up as a real success story."
"We didn't take the (government) bailout," during the 2007-2009 recession, Ford told reporters at a conference in Detroit on May 23, contrasting his company with GM and Chrysler . "We paid back our debts. We pulled ourselves up by our boot straps. We are investing in America."
Crisis management experts said companies targeted by Trump need to be thinking more about the policy implications of his presidency. That means, for example, shoring up support in the U.S. Congress for the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), which Trump has said he wants to renegotiate.
A trade lobbyist who asked not to be named because he has worked with one of the companies Trump has called out said Trump's attacks do not particularly hurt companies' reputations in Washington, because policymakers understand presidential campaigns are the "political silly season."
But, he said, they can impact broader efforts on trade and other policies. "I think what this suggests," he said, "is that there needs to be a concentrated effort by the business community to talk about the benefits of trade."