David Brat: Who is Donald Trump’s nominee to be US ambassador to Australia? Everything we know

Donald Trump’s pick to become the next United States ambassador to Australia is a religious economics professor and former anti-establishment Republican congressman staunchly opposed to free trade — making him an ideal MAGA loyalist diplomat.

David Brat had his nomination sent to the Senate on Monday night less than four weeks after the US President’s administration slapped 100 per cent tariffs on pharmaceuticals — Australia’s third biggest export.

The 61-year-old former dean of Liberty University’s School of Business last year made it clear he believed free trade was a myth, only a fortnight before the Trump Administration announced it would double tariffs on Australian steel and aluminium to 50 per cent.

The God-fearing protectionist would be moving to Canberra, making him the first American ambassador to Australia since Caroline Kennedy, the daughter of slain US president John Kennedy, relinquished her post in November 2024 shortly after Trump won the last election.

The permanent replacement for acting ambassador Erika Olson is ideologically aligned with President Trump on tariffs, which University of Sydney US Studies Centre research director Jared Mondschein said paradoxically made this appointment good news for Australia.

“To have an ambassador who can faithfully share Australia’s perspective on these matters is really important and Dave Brat not only has the considerable grassroots ties with the MAGA movement, he also has the ideological alignment with President Trump,” he told The Nightly.

“What you want in an ambassador, regardless of whether you share his political opinion or not, is one who can get the attention of the US President.”

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said Australia would happily work with the prospective ambassador, despite him previously accusing the Ukrainians of provoking Russia’s 2022 invasion.

“I’ll work with whoever is determined to be the Ambassador. That is a decision for the United States,” he told reporters in Canberra on Tuesday.

“We respect the sovereignty of countries to put forward ambassadors, just like we expect our choices to be endorsed.”

Deputy Prime Minister and Defence Minister Richard Marles was confident Dr Brat would be supportive of AUKUS.

“I’m sure that Dave Brat will represent the interests of the United States here in Australia, but what I’d say is that we’re really confident about the position of the United States when it comes to AUKUS that comes from the mouth of the President himself,” he told reporters.

Dr Brat, a former Republican congressman from Virginia, last year told The Federalist, an American nationalist website, that tariffs were justified because monopolies controlled international trade, likening globalisation to big tech dominating Wall Street.

“The same thing is kind of true on the international front: there is no free trade whatsoever,” he told podcaster Joy Pullmann in May 2025.

Despite being a fan of free market intellectual Milton Friedman, he said he revelled in giving “my free-market friends heart palpitations”.

“The problem with the tariff debate is the assumptions going in — in economics you got to make assumptions going into make models and one of the huge assumptions is you have a perfect competition, etcetera, and smooth, functioning markets and whatever,” he argued.

“That could not be further from the truth, anymore, right?”

The former World Bank consultant in 2019 expressed concerns about China, Australia’s biggest trading partner, taking over world trade.

“We value freedom, that’s what the fight is ultimately about and the US under Trump is finally raising this,” he said in a TV interview.

Dr Brat’s credentials as an anti-establishment Republican were cemented in the 2014 American Congressional mid-term elections when he successfully overthrew House of Representatives majority leader Eric Cantor in a Republican primary challenge.

The Tea Party-backed insurgent became the first ever challenger to overthrow a sitting majority leader since the post was created in 1899.

The married father-of-two joined the Freedom Caucus of conservative Republicans the following year as Trump announced he would join the Republican primaries as a prospective presidential candidate opposed to free trade.

This affiliation made Dr Brat an easy fit with Trump’s MAGA base.

Mr Trump, who would this week nominate him as a top diplomat, would go on to defeat Grand Old Party establishment favourite Jeb Bush in the 2016 Republican primaries before beating Democrat Hillary Clinton at the general election.

Dr Brat was re-elected at that election as the representative for Virginia’s 7th congressional district but in 2018 lost to Democrat Abigail Spanberger, as the first Trump administration lost its House majority.

Following that defeat, he was appointed the dean of Liberty University’s School of Business, citing his PhD in economics at American University and experience with the World Bank as part of a long road where “God has guided me”.

Before initially getting into politics, he had a career as an economics professor who argued Christianity and capitalism were compatible in a paper titled: “God and Advanced Mammon — Can Theological Types Handle Usury and Capitalism?”

“The main point is that we need to synthesise Christianity and capitalism,” he argued.

Despite attending a Catholic church, he describes himself as a Calvinist.

The next US ambassador to Australia is neither a traditional evangelical Christian nor a traditional political conservative in favour of completely free markets, at least when it comes to trade.