The Clinton Administration, backed by law enforcement, wants to ban the export of sophisticated code-scrambling software unless the government is provided with ways to break the codes. The new era coalitions, and their allies in business, don't always get what they want. High-tech execs have been vexed, for example, to see support for free trade weakening in both parties. Many Democrats worry that globalization is costing America jobs and depressing wages, and similar protectionist sentiment is bubbling up on the populist flanks of the Republican Party. Asia is a critical market for technology-based industries.
Business views the fund transfusion as critical to the revival of Asia's swooning economies.
Yet in the current climate, ''there's absolutely no political value in defending internationalism,'' frets former Maine Governor John R. McKernan Jr., head of the Republican Main Street Partnership. On one hand, more than 150 pieces of Internet-related legislation have been introduced in Congress in the current term, up from 24 a year ago. Yet although Microsoft Corp. and Intel Corp. are enmeshed in legal battles with antitrust enforcers, technology titans mostly have eluded the congressional impulse to regulate. But the American public is ambivalent. But as time wears on, the Internet will attract its share of good and bad legislative proposals.'' To prepare for that day, tech companies are hiring Washington lobbyists, forming industry coalitions, and making more frequent forays to plead their case in congressional hearing rooms.