George was a pirate, but he wasn’t a very good pirate.
He’d raid container ships, but going from America to China, not China to America.
China sent all the valuable things Eastward, like televisions and computers and microchips.
America, on the other hand, sent recyclable garbage and raw materials Westward.
So, George ended up with a lot of garbage and raw materials.
If it were Gold or Silver, yeah, that would work out nicely.
But 100 metric tons of recovered tires or obsolete computer motherboards with trace amounts of rare earth materials, no.
At least the crews could be ransomed.