Donald Trump announced on Wednesday the appointment of Marco Rubio as Secretary of State, confirming information circulated by American media.

The US president-elect said in a statement that the senator, known for his anti-China stances, will be “a fierce defender of our nation, a true friend to our allies, and a valiant warrior who will never back down from our enemies,” according to Agence France-Presse.

The Florida-born politician will become the first Latino to serve as the United States' top diplomat once the Republican president takes office in January.

Rubio is arguably the most hawkish choice on Trump's short list of candidates for secretary of state, and in recent years has called for a tough foreign policy toward U.S. adversaries including China, Iran and Cuba.

But over the past few years, Rubio has softened some of his positions to align more closely with Trump’s views. The president-elect has accused previous U.S. presidents of getting the country into costly and pointless wars and has pushed for a more conservative foreign policy, according to Reuters.

The new US administration will face a more volatile and dangerous global situation than when Trump took office in 2017, amid wars in Ukraine and the Middle East and China's closer alignment with US enemies Russia and Iran.

The Ukraine crisis will be at the top of Rubio's agenda.

Rubio, 53, has said in recent interviews that Ukraine needs to seek a negotiated settlement with Russia rather than focus on regaining all the territory Moscow has seized over the past decade.

He was also one of 15 Senate Republicans who voted against a $95 billion military aid package for Ukraine, which passed in April.

“I’m not on Russia’s side, but unfortunately the reality is that the way the war in Ukraine is going to end is through a negotiated settlement,” Rubio told NBC in September.

Choosing Rubio to take on a key policy role could help Trump consolidate gains among Latinos and show that they have a place at the highest levels of his administration.

Rubio is one of the most prominent anti-China hawks in the Senate and was sanctioned by Beijing in 2020 over his stance on Hong Kong after pro-democracy protests.

Rubio, whose grandfather fled Cuba in 1962, is also an outspoken opponent of normalizing relations with the Cuban government, a position on which Trump agrees.