Nearly 50,000 members of the International Longshoremen’s Association (ILA) are on strike Tuesday against the nation’s East and Gulf Coast ports, choking off the flow of many of America’s imports and exports in what could become the country’s most disruptive work stoppage in decades.

Thousands of dockworkers at more than a dozen ports along the East Coast and Gulf Coasts are poised to walk off the job on Tuesday.

Still recovering from two years of elevated inflation and COVID-19's broken supply chain, small businesses may soon face another crisis: port strikes.