Canada could steal the one prize Trump wants most
Want to bookmark your favourite articles and stories to read or reference later? Start your Independent Membership today.
Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney could steal the Nobel Peace Prize from Donald Trump after the president spent the year complaining about not receiving the award.
Trump has repeatedly aired his grievance about the Norwegian Nobel Committee not offering the medal to him, claiming to have helped resolve several world conflicts. Now, with this year’s prize announcement less than two weeks away, one of the president’s political foes may receive the coveted award.
Carney had a 14 percent chance to take the Nobel Peace Prize on October 9, leading humanitarian organizations Doctors Without Borders and Sudan’s Emergency Response Rooms, sports betting information site Covers reported Monday morning, citing data from prediction market Kalshi.
The Canadian leader has pushed back against Trump amid an escalating trade war. Carney said the U.S. tried to restrict his country’s ability to make trade deals with other nations during talks last month, which he found to be “unacceptable” and “a question of sovereignty,” the Associated Press reported.
Carney got a standing ovation for a speech he gave in January at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, in which he rebuked Trump’s threats to slap tariffs on imports from European allies until the U.S. reached a deal to acquire Greenland.
“Canada strongly opposes tariffs over Greenland and calls for focused talks to achieve our shared objectives of security and prosperity in the Arctic,” Carney said.
He also talked about the “rupture in the world order…where the large, main power, geopolitics, is submitted to no limits, no constraints.
“On the other hand, I would like to tell you that the other countries, especially intermediate powers like Canada, are not powerless. They have the capacity to build a new order that encompasses our values, such as respect for human rights, sustainable development, solidarity, sovereignty and territorial integrity of the various states,” Carney said.
Carney’s chances of winning the Nobel Peace Prize dropped to 5 percent on Kalshi by Monday evening, falling behind Sudan’s Emergency Response Rooms and Doctors Without Borders. But he still led Trump, who had a 2 percent chance of winning the award on Kalshi.
Trump has exaggerated his accomplishments in world peace while starting a war with Iran, saying the Middle Eastern country posed an “imminent” threat to Americans because of its “nuclear ambitions.”
“I ended eight wars. Did I get the Nobel Prize? No,” Trump said from the Oval Office earlier this month. “Although the person that got it was nice enough that she gave it to me. She said, nobody in the history of the Nobel Prize deserves it more than you. But in Norway, they don't like me because I think they think I'm a little conservative."
Trump was referring to Venezuelan opposition leader María Corina Machado, the 2025 Nobel Peace Prize winner who presented her medal to Trump in January after U.S. forces captured Venezuela’s then-President Nicolás Maduro.
Publicly viewable Pentagon data reveals that at least 19 American troops have died in the Iran war, and thousands more Iranians have been killed, according to reports.
During his speech at the United Nations General Assembly in New York last week, Trump threatened to annihilate Iran.
“I have a big decision to make — will a deal be made with Iran that lets them rebuild and create a far greater country than it ever was before…or do I annihilate the Islamic Republic and do it quickly, never giving them a chance to kill and destroy people and countries again?” Trump asked.
While Trump wages war with a Middle East adversary, he is also picking a fight with America’s northern ally. The president has pushed for Canada to become the 51st state and called Carney the “future governor of Canada.” He also signed an executive order last month to change the name of Lake Ontario to “Lake America.”
After trade talks failed, Trump imposed a 50 percent tariff on about $20 billion of Canadian imports last month, according to the AP. Canadian officials then announced “dollar-for-dollar” tariffs on American goods, including steel, electronics and dairy, that began earlier this month. Trump’s administration then banned some Canadian dairy products, motorcycles, and most alcoholic beverages, which Carney said were “relatively modest measures” compared to other U.S. actions, according to another AP report.
Carney has signaled that he will continue to work with Trump on other international issues, saying, “We continue to have to work with the United States. We can compartmentalize across this.”
