Donald Trump refuses to do the one thing that could win him the Nobel Peace Prize

Since US President Donald Trump failed to win the 2025 Nobel Peace Prize he has redoubled his trade wars, invaded Venezuela and started a war with Iran.

Still, some believe he has one realistic shot at winning the award he has so desperately coveted – but he seems deadset against it.

Warnings about existential threats to humanity have pushed artificial intelligence to the top of the agenda and some had dared to hope Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping would emerge from their bilateral meeting in Washington with a safety pact.

But Trump dashed those hopes very publicly in his opening address to the United Nations General Assembly in New York, doubling down on his refusal to do anything to rein in the technology. 

“I'm not going to stifle growth of something that will be bigger than the industrial revolution,” he said, while attempting to rename AI as “super intelligence”.

Would an AI pact seal the deal?

Several notable figures have argued a deal to slow AI development was exactly what it would take for Trump to get his hands on the 18-carat gold portrait of Alfred Nobel.

Lowy Institute policy analyst and researcher Tom Barber went so far as to argue Australia and other countries should be putting it on the agenda.

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He suggested diplomats and leaders should “flatter his ego, talk up his dealmaking, and float the prospect of a Nobel publicly”.

“It is not a stretch to imagine the allure of that gold medal could influence his decisions, because it already has,” he wrote this month.

“The idea of Nobel laureate Trump motivated his push to broker peace agreements in 2025 between Russia and Ukraine, and between Israel and Hamas. 

“Those weren’t exactly raging successes, but any US–China agreement that tones down some of the competitive geopolitical dynamics while opening space for more co-operation on AI safety would legitimately be Nobel-worthy.”

Even a relatively weak deal would do, Barber said, arguing it would at least set some sort of AI governance baseline for the world to build on.

OpenAI chief executive Sam Altman is one of a number of senior industry figures who have called for regulations and a general slowdown, known in tech lingo as “pacing the frontier”.

He said even “some shared standards and testing” would be a “wonderful achievement”.

“I think presidents Trump and Xi would get the Nobel Peace Prize together if they could agree on something that should be easy to agree to, and it would be wonderful,” he told Fortune earlier this month.

University of NSW AI Institute chief scientist Toby Walsh said the Washington summit would be the “perfect place to agree a slowdown”, and suggested it could earn them at least a nomination.

“And it would be easy. Any such agreement just requires getting half a dozen companies in the US and China, those with the resources to be pushing the frontier, to toe the line,” he wrote in an opinion piece for The Australian Financial Review.

“How hard can that be?”

Xi in favour but Trump not moving

As Xi arrived in Washington to a red carpet on the tarmac and bombastic military review, the Republican leader promised AI would be a “big topic of discussion”.

Xi showed some willingness to take action, declaring “we have both the capability and responsibility” to manage AI for good, while keeping it under human control and serving the wellbeing of the people.

But Trump appeared to have already made up his mind before the meeting.

“Super Intelligence (SI) will be a big topic of discussion, but I want to leave it exactly where it is,” he posted on Truth Social before meeting Xi.

“That is China’s position also. Our guardrail is the DOJ!”

Xi and Trump did emerge from their White House meeting on Thursday with a deal – but it was for Beijing to send two pandas to Atlanta zoo as the US sends 100,000 young Americans to China for studies and exchanges in the next five years.

Can Trump win?

Every year, Oslo’s Peace Research Institute puts out a shortlist of worthy recipients of the award. It has no affiliation with the Norwegian Nobel Institute but a reasonable track record of picking a winner, although there have been multiple recent winners not on that year’s shortlist.

Trump was not on the list this year or last year. Asked if the president could win this year, acting Haakon Gjerløw was blunt: no.

He said Trump could try to highlight his Gaza peace agreement but pointed to huge humanitarian problems there and questions about it lasting. 

Nobel’s will stressed the importance of international co-operation, something Trump had “not consistently been in favour of” and the committee would need to look “holistically” at this wider record.

“If we look at this year, like we started with the military intervention in Venezuela, then we had the military intervention in Iran,” he told nine.com.au. 

“There has been trade wars.”

An AI deal “would at least make him a more serious contender”.

“If they actually found an agreement on regulations of AI, I think the two of them, that could happen depending a little bit on what else would be going on at the same time,” he said.

Trump likely nominated for Nobel Peace Prize

Trump tried to play down his desire for the prize in January but his recent comments suggest he still wants it.

“I ended eight wars; I get no credit for it,” he said, earlier this month.

“Did I get the Nobel Prize? No, although the person who got it was nice enough that she gave it to me.”

He’s very likely to be among the more than 200 people and almost 80 organisations who are candidates for this year’s prize, which can’t actually be given to someone else.

The organisation behind the awards declined to confirm his nomination earlier this year but the leaders of Cambodia, Israel and Pakistan have all said they nominated him.

"The Peace Prize is even ⁠more important in a period like the one we're living in," Norwegian Nobel Institute director Kristian Berg Harpviken said in April. 

"There is as much good work, if not more, than ever.

Who wins the prize?

A lot goes into selecting a winner and PRIO’s list includes some outstanding candidates, highlighting international cooperation and important institutions that are coming under attack.

That includes the Committee to Protect Journalists – amid a push to undermine the free press in many countries – and the International Criminal Court, which may be facing US sanctions after issuing arrest warrants against Israeli leaders.

Ukrainian social and political activist Mykola Kuleba and Save the Children would “highlight both the devastating impact of war on children, and children’s agency in these settings”.

Sudan’s Emergency Rooms is operating in one of the world’s most severe humanitarian crises, where nearly a third of people have been displaced since the conflict erupted in 2023.

“Because of the controversies that happened after last year's prize and with Machado giving the medallion to Donald Trump, my guess would be that they will try to stay more on the less controversial side of things,” Gjerløw predicted, saying that boded well for Save the Children or Sudan’s Emergency Rooms.

Gjerløw said the institute would consider outside attempts to influence the decision – whether from Trump or elsewhere – but would be unlikely to worry about a repeat of Trump’s Norway tariff punishment when he failed to win last year.

“I do think they at least take into consideration whether the award could do more harm,” he said.

“I don't think they care about the Norwegian government, but I do think they might care if it would do harm to the Nobel laureate.”