“You’re Tough,” said President Trump to Claudia Sheinbaum, the Mexican President.

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With a trade war brewing, President Trump offered the Mexican president a sign of grudging respect: “You’re tough,” he told her during a phone call last month, according to four people with knowledge of the exchange.

By the time of their most recent conversation, the two leaders were trading compliments and carving out a reprieve from some tariffs in real time, the people familiar with the call said.

When Claudia Sheinbaum became president on Oct. 1, the first woman to ever govern Mexico, there were doubts about how she would handle the relationship with the United States—especially if Mr. Trump won re-election.

A proud leftist and a scientist by training, Ms. Sheinbaum had little foreign policy experience in her previous post as mayor of Mexico City. Unlike her predecessor, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, who got along with Mr. Trump and shared his bombastic style, Ms. Sheinbaum was seen more as a reserved technocrat than a political showwoman.

But she has surprised many in her country not only by fending off a barrage of threats from Mr. Trump but also by forging, somewhat improbably, a relationship of budding public respect with her American counterpart.

“Nobody expected her to be this good, or this lucky,” said Carlos Bravo Regidor, a Mexican political analyst. “Whatever it is, it’s working.”

On the campaign trail, Mr. Trump made Mexico a clear target of his attacks. Once elected, he vowed to impose tariffs on America’s southern neighbor until fentanyl stopped flowing into the United States.

Yet lately, he has been lavishing praise on Ms. Sheinbaum, even as he excoriates more seasoned world leaders. He’s called her “a wonderful woman” with whom he has a “very good” relationship.