My friend Hugh Corbet, who has died aged 88, was an expert in trade policy and an advocate of free trade who advised various governments around the world, including those of Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan in the 1980s.
As co-founder and head of the Trade Policy Research Centre (TPRC) thinktank in London from 1968 to 1989, he quickly became a sought-after adviser to politicians, and by 1979 was also working as a consultant on trade policy to the International Chamber of Commerce in Paris and as a special trade adviser to the Conservative party.
