The Lowdown: Food and drugs and rough trade

What has Nike ever done for the Third World? Plenty, the former head of the WTO tells Jason Nissé

After holding forth for half an hour on everything from the rift between France and the US to the Aids crisis, Mike Moore stops and reaches for a previously hidden packet of cigarettes.

"You know, in New Zealand it's getting like California, where if you light up a cigarette someone comes and takes it out of your mouth," says the man who was formerly prime minister of New Zealand and, until last year, director-general of the World Trade Organisation. "And they're right, of course. And that really irritates you. I can accept criticism if it's unjustified."

Moore has certainly had to shoulder criticism. When he took over the WTO in 1999 he was derided as an American stooge (an accusation he rejects, reeling off all the countries that voted for him, including France, lots of nations in Africa and a few in Asia). During his three years there, he was attacked by non- governmental organisations (NGOs) and anti- globalisation protesters. (Who can forget the riots at the trade summit in Seattle?)

But as someone who once worked in an abattoir and who survived the rough and tumble of New Zealand politics, Moore takes it all on the chin. The cover of his new book, A World without Walls, which deals with his time at the WTO, features a papier mâché model of him made by protesters, with the slogan "Michael Moore starves the poor" hanging round its neck.

"The publisher put it up and I really didn't like it at first," Moore says. "But then I thought about the basic contradictions. If we could do the agriculture deal we would return to Africa four or five times more than all the ODA [official development assistance] put together, and 10 times more than all the debt relief granted so far."

The agriculture deal Moore is referring to was one of the big unfinished pieces of work that he passed to his successor, Thai politician Supachai Panitchpakdi. The plan, which forms a key part of the Doha trade round launched under Moore, would reform the whole US and European subsidy system and so give a fairer deal to farmers in developing countries. It has the support of Franz Fischler, the European Commissioner responsible for farming, who is grappling with vested interests as he tries to reform the Common Agricultural Policy.

"The tragedy of the US and European farming policies is the money tends to go to the richest. Who was the biggest beneficiary of the Farm Bill? Ted Turner? He hardly needs the money," claims Moore. "For Britain it would mean, if we did the deal, that the average family would get a £10-a-week pay increase in terms of their purchasing power in food alone."

He cites farming as one of the biggest issues facing the WTO. "There will be no substantial conclusion to this round unless agriculture is addressed."

Friends of Moore would say that launching the Doha trade round, the first for 15 years, after the failure of the Seattle summit was the greatest achievement of his three years at the WTO. But Moore disagrees: "I thought getting China as a member was more important."

Bringing the world's most populous country and fastest-growing major economy into the WTO could pave the way for Russia, the only other big economy outside the WTO, to join. However, this would be at the risk of changing the organisation's balance and structure.

"True, we have another elephant in the living room," admits Moore. "In the last quarter of last year [China] was getting more foreign investment than the US. That's probably the first time that's happened for a couple of hundred years."

Critics attack China's human rights, labour rights and environmental record. But that doesn't seem to bother Moore. "The Chinese have lifted 150 million out of extreme poverty in 15 years, which is a remarkable performance," he argues. "Once you get living standards up to a certain level, people will demand greater environmental standards. It's a little condescending for rich white guys to argue that the environment is the other guy's problem, when it's the Europeans who are overfishing the seas and polluting the water table with fertilisers."

And, anyway, in Moore's world view, bringing China into the WTO, making it abide by international trade rules and encouraging multinationals to invest in the country will do more than anything else to bring about positive change.

He continues: "On the labour issue, Nike gets a lot of stick from NGOs. It pays five times the standard wage in Vietnam and three times in Indonesia, and this creates a real problem because professors are walking out of universities to go and work on the Nike factory floor.

"In truth, the multinationals are usually better employers, have better safety records and have better health records than the domestic employers. And this is where I part company with Naomi Klein and these anti-brand campaigners, because I think brands are a good thing. A brand is a reputation. A reputation is your history and your integrity. Multinationals are subject to public reports and shareholders' meetings if they are not upholding the brand."

Moore's support for multinationals even extends to the Aids crisis, which caused the large drug companies to come under fire for the high prices they were charging in developing countries such as South Africa and Brazil.

Public pressure forced the likes of Glaxo SmithKline and Merck to cut the cost of the treatments. "Most pharmaceutical companies are now doing dual pricing, so that in the countries where there is the greatest danger, they discount or give the drugs away," Moore says. "This causes a commercial contradiction. Because why should the middle class in South Africa get them cheaper than the working class in Detroit?"

And Moore throws the issues back to the developing countries. "The problem is, if you don't have an effective ministry of health, if the drugs stay on the shelves too long, if the nurses are not adequately trained or the politicians pretend there is no problem, what can you do?"

Having made comments like "the problem big business has is dealing with corrupt governments", it is not surprising that Moore is seen by many as a friend of the rich nations. But he claims he has been able to turn the debate so that most NGOs now talk about reforming the WTO rather than doing away with it.

What is certain is that in his time at the WTO, the organisation moved from the "what trade organisation?" on to the front pages of the newspapers. As he says: "Trade policy used to be really, really boring – it is still is, in a way, but now it's becoming democratised."

'A World without Walls' is published by Cambridge University Press at £20.