Router Maker TP-Link Proposing $1 Billion Investment in U.S. Manufacturing
The company said lawsuits over its China ties were attempts to block its request for a waiver from the Trump administration’s foreign router ban
Photo of Nebraska Attorney General Mike Hilgers outside the Supreme Court in 2023 by Patrick Semansky/AP
WASHINGTON, Oct. 15, 2026 – A major router manufacturer is pushing back on lawsuits from four states alleging the company misled consumers about its ties to the Chinese government.
In a filing posted Wednesday, TP-Link told federal regulators it was planning to spend nearly $1 billion on U.S.-based manufacturing facilities and research and development.
That, the company said, would allow it to start manufacturing next-generation Wi-Fi 8 routers in the U.S. as soon as next year.
The proposal is contingent on an approval of TP-Link’s request to import new router models. Acting on a determination from other law enforcement agencies, the Federal Communications Commission banned all new foreign-made routers in March.
Along with the Defense Department and Department of Homeland Security, the FCC has been granting temporary waivers from the ban, including some to other big manufacturers like Asus and Netgear. TP-Link’s still has not been approved.
Those approvals require companies to put forward a plan for onshoring some of their manufacturing. Dell’Oro Group vice president Jeff Heynan said soon after the ban was announced that it was “almost impossible that these companies would even consider onshoring manufacturing, where input costs are significantly higher than in Southeast Asia.”
TP-Link told the FCC it took up 20 percent of the total router market in April, and a former National Security Agency official told Congress last year the company accounted for more than 60 percent of the consumer market.
The California-based company, legally TP-Link Systems, was spun off from Chinese firm TP-Link Technologies in 2024.
Last week attorneys general from Florida, Iowa, Mondata, and Nebraska each sued the company, alleging it had misled consumers about its continued ties to China and arguing Chinese law could require TP-Link to turn over information to Chinese intelligence services.
TP-Link maintains it manufactures all its American products in Vietnam, but the lawsuits pointed to a 2025 Bloomberg report that found 99 percent of the components assembled in the Vietnam plant came from China.
Nebraska AG Mike Hilgers led a group of 21 attorneys general in a letter outlining similar concerns to the FCC.
TP-Link said DoD and DHS should not weigh those concerns when evaluating its waiver request.
“Rather than seeking to advance legitimate public policy objectives, the letter appears aimed primarily at encouraging federal officials to apply a heightened standard to TP-Link’s pending application that would be unattainable to TP-Link or any other router manufacturer in the world,” Steve Kovsky, TP-link’s corporate affairs officer, said in the Wednesday letter.
He continued, “If successful, this approach would undermine fair competition, damage consumer interests, and place at risk American leadership in the router marketplace, a market where the ability for U.S. companies to compete and innovate freely is critical to our national security and infrastructure.”
