More medical gloves are coming from China, as U.S. makers of protective gear struggle

https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2023/11/03/ [login to see] /medical-gloves-china-u-s-makers-personal-protective-gear-struggle
A 85-foot-tall, dark-gray building stands in southern Virginia, surrounded by grassy fields and rolling blue mountains. This brand-new chemical plant was set up during the pandemic to produce a special type of synthetic rubber that's needed to make medical exam gloves, the kind used everyday by doctors and nurses.

But so far, this factory has produced nothing.

About 340 miles northeast, in Maryland, another brand-new factory sits idle and unfinished. This one was designed to take that kind of synthetic rubber and transform it into medical gloves. It's a 735,000-square-foot building full of equipment, but the machines inside of it have not been fully set up.