A substantial majority of American business leaders are planning for U.S. tariffs to stay elevated for years – and that’s a reasonable expectation, according to trade specialists at PwC.

Around 86% of U.S. executives are expecting that import taxes will remain a significant feature of the country’s economic landscape even beyond the Trump era, said PwC’s Rohit Kumar, citing a new survey that his company conducted last month.

There are several reasons those executives are right about this outlook, according to Kumar, who is co-leader of PwC’s national tax office and was previously a top staffer to longtime Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell.

One factor is that by January 2029, the world “will have normed in” whatever tariffs were imposed during President Donald Trump’s second term, Kumar said. “Whatever adjustments have to happen in the marketplace will have happened,” he told reporters during a briefing last week that highlighted his company’s survey, which revealed how 633 executives say they’re navigating the second Trump administration.

Another factor is that it will be tough to end tariffs when they’re bringing in big money for the federal government. Even if the inflow is below forecasts, it still will be “a significant amount of revenue against a federal budget picture that is not improving – and is running headlong into a Social Security trust fund insolvency date of like 2032 or early 2033,” Kumar said.

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