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Article snippet: BEIJING — President Trump came into office fuming about North Korea. “I believe he is trying very hard,” Mr. Trump said in an interview with Reuters on Thursday. “He is a good man. He is a very good man, and I got to know him very well.” That’s heady praise for someone the president had never met before this month. But Mr. Trump’s time as a businessman may help make sense of his backslapping tributes to Mr. Xi. In “Trump: The Art of the Deal,” his braggadocious memoir-cum-business playbook from 1987, Mr. Trump explained how he flattered, pummeled, cajoled and bluffed his way to what he wanted. He seems to hope to use the same tactics with China. “A little hyperbole never hurts,” he wrote of his deal-making. Before the recent courtship, Mr. Trump had little good to say about China or Mr. Xi. In March 2016, Mr. Trump was asked in an interview with The New York Times about his impressions of Mr. Xi. Instead, he vented about China’s trade surplus with the United States. “Nobody has manipulated economic conditions better than they have,” he said. After Mr. Trump won the election, he kept taking potshots at the Chinese leadership. In December, Mr. Trump had a friendly phone chat with Tsai Ing-wen, the president of Taiwan, alarming Chinese officials, who regard Taiwan as a breakaway province. Mr. Trump and Mr. Xi had a brief phone call days after the American election, but more than two months passed before they had their next call — their first since the president took... Link to the full article to read more