Speech by Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-CA). Re: the new economy, and permanent normal trade relations status for China. Date: April 3, 2000. Source: Office of Rep. Zoe Lofgren.

It's a great pleasure to welcome you to San Jose - the Capitol of Silicon Valley -- to the center of gravity of new technology, entrepreneurship, innovation, and the new economy.

As a baby boomer raised in this valley, I've watched us morph from a sleepier time to today's frenetic boom. While there's no one reason for the evolution, certain key elements cannot be overlooked.

Looking back to my childhood here in the 50's, I know that the combination of scientific ideas, energy and capital which now moves the world is different than then. And we can identify trends and policies that brought us to the place where we are now, the true beginning of a new millennium.

Here are some of them: a persistent emphasis on education, science and technology; a willingness to take chances – in the Valley, failure is not an end but a learning experience; optimism -- a belief that market forces make us stronger; courage and confidence to compete with the rest of the world; and finally a belief in merit and the advantages of diversity.

It's particularly fitting that President Clinton is with us in Silicon Valley this morning because the themes that fostered Silicon Valley and the new economy and the President's policy agenda have a tremendous amount in common. They are the policies that President Clinton proposed and the Democratic party has carried out over the last seven years which have helped foster our current success.

In an information based economy, the country whose people are well trained and well educated wins, and our President understands this. Competitive market forces make us stronger, and the President and Congress have helped nurture such forces by achieving a balanced Federal budget and deregulating industries, such as telecommunications, so that markets can bring progress and innovation.

Finally, our President has not flinched from global economic competition – whether it's to insure that our laws allow the immigration of people like Linus Torvalds, who invented Linux and is here on an H1B visa, or whether it is leading – indeed sometimes pushing – our country to be engaged economically in the world arena.

These factors have brought us unprecedented prosperity.

As I think back to my childhood in this Valley, I know that this prosperity is a very important thing, not to be taken for granted. Growing up, while my two parents worked hard every day, life in the Valley was sometimes touch and go. When my Dad was out of work, we lived on the edge. When the economy was good and jobs plentiful, then things got better for our family. But even then, in our ordinary lives, we had nothing like life today with technology and our global economy.

The Clinton Democratic policies that allowed America to achieve an astonishing 7.1% growth in GDP in the last report means that families like the one I grew up in have work ... and children in such families have the possibility to aspire to a college education and an even brighter future.

While change is an American cultural value, the truth is that rapid change can leave us breathless and uneasy. Some of our fellow Americans are profoundly alarmed by the pace of change. They're worried about where they will land in this "new economy", or they fear globalization – both the increasing diversity here and our new willingness to engage in trade on a global basis. We don't have the option to go back to an earlier day. So we need to make sure we won't allow people to be left behind. Change works best when it works for us all.

Sometimes I think apprehensions are tied up with nostalgia for what was. I've struggled to separate the affectionate nostalgia I feel for the time when I was a happy child in a loving family in this Valley in the 1950's, from the reality of those times – when so many working people lived close to the edge like my family.

It's clear that, notwithstanding our nostalgia for "the good old days", the social and economic forces we have unleashed make today's world a better one, with more freedom, more opportunity, and more prosperity.

Unlike the America of my childhood, today women as well as men can be valued for their professionalism. Discrimination based on race, ethnicity, religion or sexual orientation is condemned. America now understands that children in poor and blue collar families must achieve academic excellence for the nation to prosper, even if we have a ways to go to fully implement that understanding.

These days we have more interesting communities, where Americans have names like Tran, Chen, Gallegos and Singh in addition to Smith and Jones. And in our world today, we can, with assurance, agree to be economic trading partners with former enemies like China, confident that American entrepreneurship will continue to benefit our county and secure in the belief that the American values of freedom and democracy will be transmitted along with American products throughout the world.

Because the truth is we had a cold war. Communism lost; Capitalism won. Our economic system is delivering prosperity to our country. If we can just resist our natural fear of change, our economic and political system will help deliver freedom, peace and prosperity throughout the world, because free markets cannot prosper in authoritarian regimes, and in a global world, authoritarian regimes cannot long survive the impact of freedom and free markets.

I'm certain our continued robust growth here in Silicon Valley and all across America depends not only on having the best and the brightest to reinvent our world, but also on having full access to world markets.

So, in addition to welcoming all of you and our President here today, I am also happy to thank President Clinton for his leadership in pursuing permanent normal trade relations with China and I'm happy to say that I will support and vote for PNTR.

The President is right. Engaging China and exposing China to the sunlight of free market economics and democratic political values is the best way to bring about evolution towards freedom in China.

And, PNTR is a good deal for America. It lowers Chinese tariffs on goods we sell in China, increasing access to Chinese markets for American products that will create more good paying jobs here at home for our people, including working families, like the family I grew up in in this valley. America gets this without lowering a single tariff, without changing a single trade law.

Clinton policies -- education rich, technology promoting, diversity honoring and pro-trade -- have come to dominate the center of American politics for a reason, because they work. The unprecedented prosperity we enjoy, with greater freedom and enviable diversity, are not something we should risk because of fear of change and the future. We should embrace change, and PNTR, and the continued prosperity that will follow.