Trump expected to appoint China critics Marco Rubio and Mike Waltz | Donald Trump

President-elect Donald Trump has reportedly decided to appoint prominent China hawks Marco Rubio and Mike Waltz as his respective secretaries of state and national security adviser.

Rubio was arguably the most combative option on Trump’s shortlist for secretary of state, and he has pushed for a forceful foreign policy against America’s geopolitical enemies, including China, Iran and Cuba, in recent years.

In recent years, the Florida senator has softened some of his positions to align more closely with Trump’s views. The president-elect accuses previous US presidents of leading America into costly and futile wars and is pushing for a more restrained foreign policy.

Rubio, a failed challenger to Trump for the Republican presidential nomination in 2016, was rumored to be a leading candidate for Trump’s vice presidential nomination even before JD Vance was announced.

Since his failed presidential bid, Rubio has served as an informal foreign policy adviser, helping Trump prepare for his first debate against Biden in 2020.

Trump has not confirmed the planned appointment, which was first reported by The New York Times. If confirmed, Rubio would be the first Latino to serve as America’s top diplomat when the Republican president-elect takes office in January.

While the notoriously mercurial Trump could always change his mind at the last minute, he appeared to have made up his mind as of Monday, sources told Reuters.

While Rubio was far from the most isolated option, his likely election nonetheless underscores a broader shift in Republican foreign policy views under Trump.

Once the party of hawks who favored military intervention and a forceful foreign policy, most of Trump’s allies are now preaching restraint, especially in Europe, where many Republicans complain that U.S. allies are not paying their fair share for defense.

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

Waltz, a Republican congressman and Trump loyalist who also served as a colonel in the National Guard, has criticized Chinese activities in the Asia-Pacific and expressed the need for the U.S. to be prepared for a possible conflict in the region.

Last week, Waltz won re-election to the U.S. House seat representing east central Florida, which includes Daytona Beach. He defeated Democrat James Stockton, a pastor and former president of a local NAACP chapter.

Waltz is a combat-decorated Green Beret and former White House and Pentagon policy adviser. He was first elected in 2018, replacing Republican Ron DeSantis, who was running for governor, in Florida’s Sixth Congressional District.

Waltz completed multiple combat tours in Afghanistan and was awarded four Bronze Stars.

He was one of the lawmakers appointed in July to serve on a bipartisan congressional task force to investigate the attempted assassination of Trump in Butler, Pennsylvania, in July.

After Waltz left the U.S. Army, he worked at the Pentagon in the George W. Bush administration as policy director for former Defense Secretaries Donald Rumsfeld and Robert Gates.

Waltz served as counterterrorism adviser to former Vice President Dick Cheney.

In 2021, after Joe Biden ordered a chaotic evacuation from Afghanistan, Waltz called on Biden to change course and resume military operations in the region. The war in Afghanistan began under Bush after the attacks of September 11, 2001.

The Intercept reported that before running for Congress in 2018, Waltz ran a lucrative defense company with offices in Afghanistan.

Waltz has repeatedly expressed the need to protect the Afghan people and said that U.S. soldiers “must go back.” According to government reports, U.S. nation-building efforts resulted in the deaths of more than 48,000 civilians and 66,000 Afghan police and military personnel, as well as widespread torture.

In further developments on Trump’s appointments, South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem has been selected to be the next secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, CNN reported Tuesday, citing two sources.

Earlier this year, Noem was widely seen as a potential candidate for Trump’s presidential bid. She lost after recycling a two-decade-old story meant to illustrate crucial leadership skills in which she shot a puppy that wasn’t hunting and had bitten members of her family.

Reuters contributed to this report