I hope you realize that go.GraphObject.make is used to build the visual tree of a Part (a Node in this case). It does not make sense to try to call Node.expandTree when building a Node, especially since you are not even calling that method on the Node being built. Unless you have defined your own expandTree function, that should cause a JavaScript error.
Setting Node.isTreeExpanded to true or false is what you need to do to make sure it is expanded or collapsed when the node is created.