I'm not sure how this would even work as most cars have Chinese links in some form.

Under this logic popular car brands that would be removed are Volvo, Polestar, Zeek, Lotus, MG, BYD, Smart, LDV, Chery, GWM, Jaecoo/Omoda, Leapmotor, Xpeng, etc - these are only off the top of my head.

How would it even work with Tesla (America's golden child) - a large amount of their cars are built in China with strong links to the Chinese?

Maybe they'll go by whether the majority ownership is Chinese? In that case Volvo and Polestar (and probably all the others on your list) would be banned (if they're being consistent), but not Tesla.