Trump's Nobel Peace Prize dream may fall short due to economic failures

Donald Trump called Norway’s finance minister out of nowhere. This wasn’t about trade, NATO, or diplomacy. No, the POTUS wanted to know how he could get nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize.

The call, confirmed by Norway’s biggest business paper Dagens Naeringsliv, caught Finance Minister Jens Stoltenberg while walking the streets of Oslo earlier this month.

This wasn’t some quiet outreach through staff or back channels. Trump personally picked up the phone and cold-called Stoltenberg. The only reason? He wanted a path to that prize.

He’s made it clear for years now that he wants to be handed a Nobel. According to people around him, this obsession is what’s behind his recent attempts to broker peace deals in Ukraine and Russia, and between Israel and Gaza.

Nobel economists attack Trump’s economic legacy

Trump even ranted about the whole thing on Truth Social back in June. He wrote, “No, I won’t get a Nobel Peace Prize no matter what I do, including Russia/Ukraine, and Israel/Iran, whatever those outcomes may be, but the people know, and that’s all that matters to me!”

But this week, the focus won’t be on peace talks. It’ll be about the economy. And the ones doing the talking are the same Nobel Laureates he wants to stand beside. They’re gathering in Lindau, Germany, for their annual meeting. And what they’re saying about Trump isn’t good.

Joseph Stiglitz, one of the world’s most recognized economists and a previous Nobel winner, told The Guardian the U.S. under Trump had become “a scary place to invest.”

He pointed to the president’s tariff policies as the problem, warning that they could lead to stagflation, a toxic combo of high inflation and no growth. He said the Federal Reserve is “clearly worried” about this.

Roger Myerson, another Laureate attending the Lindau event, focused on Trump’s political behavior. In The Hill, he wrote that “when large groups of voters have become convinced that only one party really cares about them, then they may feel no stake in democracy itself… and support their leader in shaking off its inconvenient constitutional restraints.”

And then there’s Simon Johnson, another voice in the Nobel circle. He joined the criticism too, speaking on the Nobel Prize Conversations podcast.

He said Trump’s push for American isolationism is “destroying human capital” and giving “a massive advantage to geopolitical competitors.” He called the policy “a self-defeating foolish action by the Trump administration.”

Despite all this backlash, Trump has at least one unexpected voice offering him a slim chance. Hillary Clinton, his former rival and ex-First Lady, said something most didn’t expect.

In a recent interview, she said that if Trump could end the Ukraine-Russia war “without putting Ukraine in a position where it must concede its territory to the aggressor… I’d nominate him for a Nobel Peace Prize.”

But good luck with that.

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