Not seeing that here in a quick test...
With NORMALIZE disabled I lowered gain of a clip in the timeline. The graphic display on the timeline did not change, but the gain of the clip was reduced.
Then right-clicked and saved as new audio clip. The clip gain did not change, either when played as a clip or after being dropped onto the timeline. WMV export was the same.
With NORMALIZE enabled, the gain of the same newly created reduced clip was raised (normalized) only after being placed on the timeline.