Yes, do "esModuleInterop": true in your tsconfig.json. For every flag option that can be passed to the CLI, the same can usually be done this way in the config file. Doing tsc --init on the command line generates a tsconfig full of comments explaining all of the available options.
EDIT: I’ve learned that the behavior of esModuleInterop is dependent on what is set to module.
If you have "module": "commonjs", you only need to enable "esModuleInterop": true.
If you have "module": "es2015" or "module": "esnext", you also have to enable "allowSyntheticDefaultImports": true in order to import CommonJS modules (like React) as a default.