What attributes make firms more likely to receive privileged treatment from their government? Trade policy, as a redistributive tool, has long been used to understand such questions of special interest politics. We study patterns in decisions made by the US International Trade Administration and International Trade Commission to introduce a novel source of privileged treatment. We argue that the position of a firm within the economy is a key determinant of successful petitions: more ‘central’ firms, which draw on a more diverse set of inputs and which have more links throughout the domestic economy, enjoy a privileged political position, because benefits to these firms extend indirectly to a broader set of constituents. To test this argument, we use firm-level data from ORBIS and data from the Global Antidumping Database, and match it with data on linkages between firms in the domestic economy. We provide evidence that more ‘central’ firms are more likely to see their petition accepted. The findings emphasize the relevance of domestic production networks in understanding (trade) politics, providing a complement to frequently studied global production networks, and offer a new explanation of differences in the political influence of firms.