Former Virginia congressman David Brat has been confirmed by the US Senate to be the next US ambassador to Australia, after the role had been left vacant for 18 months.

Brat’s confirmation was among more than 70 votes pushed through the Senate by Republicans on Friday, Washington time, before the summer recess.

Brat was nominated by Donald Trump in April. The 61-year-old served two terms in Congress until 2018 when he was defeated by a Democrat, and was vice-president of business relations at Virginia’s Liberty University.

The ambassador role had been vacant since November 2024, when Joe Biden’s ambassador, Caroline Kennedy, left the post.

Anthony Albanese in April said he would work with anyone Trump nominated, when asked to respond to Brat’s earlier claims that US intelligence agencies conspired to remove Trump from office.

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

Brat was described by Time magazine in 2010 as a “Tea Party professor” and an enthusiast of the author Ayn Rand.

In a 2011 paper, he argued that capitalism and Christianity should merge, writing: “If we all did the right thing and had the guts to spread the word, we would not need the government to backstop every action we take.”

Brat was swept into the Senate in 2014 when he defeated the then House of Representatives majority leader, Eric Cantor, in a primary. He lost his seat in 2018 to Democrat Abigail Spanberger, who is now the governor of Virginia.

The confirmation comes amid tense US-Australia relations, with Trump levelling 12.5% tariffs on many Australian exports in July. Australia was on a list of 54 economies hit with the tariffs due to what the US claimed was a failure “to impose and effectively enforce a prohibition on the importation of goods produced with forced labor”.

At the time, the trade minister, Don Farrell, called for the tariffs to be removed, saying they were inconsistent with Australia’s free-trade agreement with the US.

Brat’s arrival in Australia will coincide with the 75th anniversary of the Anzus treaty, a security pact over defence of the Pacific, and comes after the Albanese government announced in May it would instead buy three second-hand American nuclear submarines as part of the $370bn Aukus deal, instead of two second-hand and one new as originally intended.

While the Albanese government has remained supportive of Aukus, there has been growing disquiet from some within Labor about the plan. Former cabinet minister Ed Husic said in June that the change meant “we are not going to get the deal that was promised to us”.

The former defence secretary Greg Moriarty has been Australia’s representative in Washington since taking over from former prime minister Kevin Rudd in April.