I don’t know if this is correct, but here is my theory; Container ships have to make the voyage from the US back to China, why do it empty? They need massive t

I don’t know if this is correct, but here is my theory; Container ships have to make the voyage from the US back to China, why do it empty? They need massive tonnage to bring back, and the US just doesn’t export enough into China so let’s carry recycling? (This assumes the ships that bring X from China to the US can bring Y from the US back to Chine without expensive reconfiguration, and perhaps also that the ports of entry are reasonably close?) Also, the amount of money that China was willing to pay for the material (or be paid for taking the material) was so outside the market price as to essentially be “dumping” (economically speaking) their recycling waste capture product on the US. In the presence of Chinese dumping no US facility could fairly exist in the market, so they all shut down. Now that the Chinese economic dumping had ceased, the US is left without a functioning market. Yes, it pleases me to no end to frame the problem of US recycling as China dumping. No, I haven’t been able to determine if there is any factual basis to this hypothesis!