The US is trying to do to TP-Link what they did to Huawei. Even though, as the article mentions, TP-Link devices have a US-based supply chain and are manufactured in Vietnam. This is literally just the US not allowing China to own any value-added consuming facing products in the US.
True, but where are you going to find trustworthy hardware? The US is at least as likely to backdoor hardware as China.
I’ve got a TP-Link router, and my main gripe is that it doesn’t do NAT hairpinning, which limits the value of a VPN to my home network.