The grey market thing, even if the market was absent any interference from Kubota or Yanmar, was on a downward trend for a while. When newcomers to the market (and I use that term with no disparaging intentions) started competing with the JD and Kubota brands, it gave us a lot of good options on new tractors. I think it caused JD and Kubota to keep some economy type tractors in their lineup. Mahindra, Kioti, LS, Branson, TYM, helped even the JD and Kubota buyers by trying to keep a lid on price increases. At the same time, the dollar exchange to the Yen became very unfavorable. A tractor that did cost an importer $4000 was suddenly $5500, or even more. Add a loader to a $5500 20 year old Yanmar, do a service and fix everything, add a ROPS, perhaps replace some tires and there is not much margin for the dealer to sell this for under $9k. Enter a new Mahindra/LS or whatever with a good warranty, good parts availability and power-steering, R4 tires, ROPS, and so on for $11-12k ish (at the time, a little higher now) for the 20-24HP units, and it was a perfect storm that I think made the grey markets not really such a good deal. Save $3k, get a 20 year old tractor, often without PS and with rice tires? And financing isn't always so attractive either on greys. There are of course examples where the greys are a good deal. I am just generalizing.
I think Yanmars are great tractors by the way. I recently bought a mini-excavator, a track loader and a couple of new forklifts for the business and all have Yanmar engines and they really are hard to beat.
The dollar-yen exchange is a little better now and Fredericks may be able to buy in large enough volume that he can make these a good deal. I wish him well.