When the global shipping giant CMA CGM announced in April that it had obtained a license to ship container vessels to Cuba via the Port of Houston, business executives and trade experts marveled: Unabashedly Republican Texas would soon become the Communist island nation’s leading U.S. trade partner.

Seven months later, the relationship between two very different kind of red states has not quite lived up to expectations.

As of September, fewer than 20 percent of the large containers that were expected to leave Houston for Cuba had set sail, said George Armaos, the director of strategic accounts at ...

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