Rick Woldenberg has been on the front line of the tariff battle since President Trump returned to office. He thinks he might stay there a while.

Woldenberg is chief executive of Learning Resources, which manufactures educational toys in countries such as China, Vietnam and India. His company was the lead plaintiff in the Supreme Court case that invalidated some of Trump's tariffs earlier this year, and last week it sued again when Trump imposed new duties.

Though he is hopeful of another victory, Woldenberg said he wouldn't be surprised if steep tariffs remain once another administration takes power.

"For the question of what happens after Trump, the answer is who knows?" he said. "Politicians need to raise funds to pay for all the things that they do, and it's hard for them to look at a stream of revenue and turn it down."

Many business leaders are getting used to the idea of higher tariffs -- and tariff fluctuations -- as a new normal that will stick around even after Trump leaves office in January 2029.

"There's nobody that will come and say, 'Oh, you know what? It's a good thing to import steel from China. Let's go ahead and let China go back to their control over the market,'" Lourenco Goncalves, CEO of steel manufacturer Cleveland-Cliffs, told analysts last week.

Cliffs, the largest steel supplier to the U.S. automotive industry, has been a big winner from Trump's tariffs on imported steel, which currently sit at 50%. He said President Biden didn't overturn duties imposed during Trump's first term, so the party to which the next president belongs likely will be immaterial.

However, tariff rates are far steeper now than they were during the first Trump administration. According to Robert McClelland, senior fellow at the Tax Policy Center, the highest effective rate -- the amount of tariffs collected divided by the total value of imports -- was 3% in Trump's first term. It remained roughly stable after Biden took over.

During Trump's second term, however, the effective rate topped out at close to 11% before dropping to around 7%.

That has led some companies to make major changes to their supply chains that they are unlikely to reverse. Off-road vehicle manufacturer Polaris is among the U.S. companies that have been cutting their exposure to China while building up their North American suppliers.

Polaris CEO Mike Speetzen told analysts this week that by the end of 2027, less than 5% of the company's total cost of goods sold will originate from China, reducing its tariff burden.

"We expect to see meaningful savings over the coming years should tariff policy remain consistent with where things stand today," he said.

Executives at ARB, an Australian manufacturer of off-road vehicle accessories, said at the company's annual meeting last fall that they didn't think the U.S. government would move away from tariffs once Trump is gone. That was leading them to think strategically about how to position the business for the long term, they said.

Foreign automakers are among the companies most affected by tariffs, and some have responded by announcing plans to expand their U.S. manufacturing. Jennifer Safavian, CEO of the lobby group Autos Drive America, said the focus on U.S. production will likely continue regardless of future tariff policy.

"These are all global companies, so they're making decisions on a global scale," she said.

The 2028 presidential campaign has yet to begin in earnest, but some potential candidates have already sounded off on Trump's tariffs. Vice President JD Vance and Secretary of State Marco Rubio have described them as a tool that brings fairness to international trade, while Democrats seen as early front-runners have denounced them.

California Gov. Gavin Newsom, whose state sued the federal government over the duties, deemed them "an illegal cash grab." Former Vice President Kamala Harris said they have raised the cost of living, and former Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg said they have failed to increase manufacturing employment.

But import duties generate between $20 billion and $30 billion for the U.S. Treasury every month, and John Iselin, associate director of economic analysis at the Budget Lab at Yale, said that money could be hard for any president to forgo.

A new administration could have different priorities on the industries it wants to protect, he said, or different ideas on how to use tariffs as a tool in international relations.

"You could imagine a certain level of tariffs staying in place designed to serve a particular agenda," he said.