how to handle circular dependency in node in rollup.js

After switching to npm with workspaces from yarn, I can't make rollup work due to a circular dependency in the node libraries. Was working fine prior to switch to npm and an upgrade to node to 16 (from 12 - also tried node 14).

It is a simple cli tool, with the following dependencies in package.json:

  "devDependencies": {
    "@rollup/plugin-commonjs": "22.0.1",
    "@rollup/plugin-node-resolve": "13.3.0",
    "@rollup/plugin-typescript": "8.3.3",
    "@types/node": "^16.11.9",
    "rollup": "2.77.0",
    "rollup-plugin-node-externals": "4.1.1",
    "tslib": "2.4.0",
    "typescript": "4.7.4",
    "watch": "1.0.2"
  },
  "dependencies": {
    "commander": "9.4.0",
    "execa": "^6.1.0"
  }

rollup.config.js is:

import typescript from '@rollup/plugin-typescript';
import commonjs from '@rollup/plugin-commonjs';
import { nodeResolve } from '@rollup/plugin-node-resolve';
import externals from 'rollup-plugin-node-externals';

export default {
  input: 'src/csa.ts',
  output: {
    dir: 'build',
    format: 'cjs',
    strict: false,
    banner: '#! /usr/bin/env node\n',
  },
  plugins: [typescript(), commonjs({ transformMixedEsModules: true }), nodeResolve({ preferBuiltins: true }), externals()],
};

result during build is:

src/csa.ts → build...
(!) Circular dependencies
../../node_modules/util/util.js -> ../../node_modules/util/node_modules/inherits/inherits.js -> ../../node_modules/util/util.js
../../node_modules/assert/node_modules/util/util.js -> ../../node_modules/assert/node_modules/inherits/inherits.js -> ../../node_modules/assert/node_modules/util/util.js
created build in 3.6s

and created .js file won't run when attempting to assess function that was circularly referenced:

/Users/me/apps/hrh/csa/packages/cli/build/csa.js:6795
    util.inherits(assert.AssertionError, Error);
         ^

TypeError: util.inherits is not a function
    at requireAssert (/Users/me/apps/hrh/csa/packages/cli/build/csa.js:6795:7)
    at Object.<anonymous> (/Users/me/apps/hrh/csa/packages/cli/build/csa.js:7231:16)
    at Module._compile (node:internal/modules/cjs/loader:1105:14)
    at Object.Module._extensions..js (node:internal/modules/cjs/loader:1159:10)
    at Module.load (node:internal/modules/cjs/loader:981:32)
    at Function.Module._load (node:internal/modules/cjs/loader:822:12)
    at Function.executeUserEntryPoint [as runMain] (node:internal/modules/run_main:77:12)
    at node:internal/main/run_main_module:17:47