President Trump tore into China as untrustworthy and an economic failure Tuesday, while his top negotiators were in Shanghai trying to hammer out a trade deal.

Mr. Trump warned Beijing to play ball on fair terms, saying if they try to wait out his presidency they will be smacked by harsher trade terms if he wins reelection.

“They would just love if I got defeated,” he told White House reporters. “They’ll pray that Trump loses and then they’ll make a deal with a stiff.”

He said China would prefer to deal with a Democratic contender, singling out former Vice President Joseph R. Biden and Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts.

Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin and U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer are in China this week, trying to bridge differences with the Asian superpower and find a way out of the trade dispute that is rattling global markets.

They’re trying to get things back on track after talks fell apart in May, leading to tit-for-tat tariffs. The costs of those levies may be passed down to U.S. consumers, though the president says he’s ok with the status quo, characterizing the tariffs as a boon for U.S. coffers.

Mr. Trump has been downplaying the likelihood of a deal in recent days, saying China is looking for more favorable terms from a U.S. leader who won’t take a hard line.

“The problem with them waiting, however, is that if & when I win, the deal that they get will be much tougher than what we are negotiating now…or no deal at all. We have all the cards, our past leaders never got it!” Mr. Trump tweeted.

Vice President Mike Pence’s chief of staff, Marc Short, said the China-bashing isn’t part of a political strategy to appeal to Mr. Trump’s base. He says a trade deal would be a boon for the president.

“A trade deal with China would probably boost markets, significantly. It would probably benefit the president, politically,” he told CNBC. “I don’t think he’s looking at this through a political lens.”

He said Mr. Trump is trying to “reset” the relationship with China to benefit American workers — something that would lift him heading into 2020.

In particular, the U.S. is pressing China to include enforcement mechanisms in the deal, Mr. Short said. He said previous administrations failed to crack down on the theft of intellectual property or impose limits on subsidies provided by the communist government.

Mr. Trump insists he has the upper hand on China, which recently posted its worst economic quarter in nearly three decades.

“We’re either gonna make a great deal or we’re not gonna make a deal at all,” he said.

Mr. Trump said the problem is that his rivals aren’t trustworthy, pointing to the lack of progress on their pledge to buy U.S. farm products.

“No signs that they are doing so,” he tweeted. “That is the problem with China, they just don’t come through.”

Xinhua, a state-run Chinese news agency, appeared to dispute that in a report this week, saying “millions of tons” of American soybeans have been shipped to China.

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