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.
Well, an entirely US supply-chain means that the US gets to potentially backdoor the devices, not China, and that sort of argument does well these days :)
And honestly the “telemetry” that most vendors already send back with our full knowledge is barely a step away from this anyway.