Icelanders voted to reject resuming talks to join the European Union, as issues such as domestic control over fishing appeared to override geopolitical security concerns.

Broadcaster RUV reported that 52.8% of voters rejected the government’s push to reopen EU membership negotiations, while 47.2% voted in favor.

The question put to the Nordic nation of nearly 400,000 was whether Iceland should resume accession negotiations with the European Union.

A majority “yes” vote would have led to a negotiated agreement being put to a second referendum for Icelanders to accept or reject.

The debate has taken on deeper significance in the wake of U.S. President Donald Trump’s Arctic saber-rattling.

But in the end, concern over the potential loss of control over its fishing industry and an erosion of national identity won out over how Iceland might be affected by geopolitical rivalries.

“The ‘No’ side succeeded because it tapped into the most fundamental driver of Icelandic national identity: the demand for absolute self-governance. This is inextricably linked to control over natural resources and fisheries, which forms the very heart of the Icelandic understanding of sovereignty,” said Eiríkur Bergmann, professor of politics at Iceland’s Bifröst University.

Fishing’s share of Iceland’s broader economy has declined over the decades, even as seafood remains a major export industry.

Marine products and farmed fish made up nearly 47% of the country’s exports in the August 2025-July 2026 period, according to Statistics Iceland.

But production halved from a peak of 2.2 million tons in 1997 to 1.1 million tons in 2024, World Bank data show. Agriculture, forestry and fishing contributed 9.1% of Iceland’s gross domestic product in 1995, but only 3.7% by 2025, as manufacturing and services grew in importance.

Greenland or Iceland?

The U.S. president has long advocated for control over neighboring Greenland on national security grounds. Notably, Trump appeared to repeatedly mix up Greenland and Iceland during a special address at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland earlier in the year.

Iceland, a founding member of NATO, is the only ally without its own military forces. The country also sits astride the so-called GIUK Gap, a naval choke point between Greenland, Iceland and the U.K. that links the Arctic to the Atlantic Ocean.

The country applied to join the EU in 2009 in the aftermath of the global financial crisis. A euroskeptic government suspended negotiations in 2013, and the accession process was formally ended in 2015.

It’s already deeply integrated into the European framework, partly through its membership of the European Economic Area, which gives the volcanic island access to the EU’s single market without requiring full membership.

It’s also a member of the Schengen Area, which allows passport-free travel between it and other participating European countries.

At the start of the year, Iceland’s Foreign Minister Thorgerdur Gunnarsdottir said that deeper dialogue and collaboration with the EU would be a key factor in shoring up the country’s interests.

“It is clear that the international system we have lived in since the end of World War II is in turmoil,” Gunnarsdottir said in an article for Icelandic newspaper Visir, according to a Google translation.

“What is perhaps most striking about this referendum is that despite the profound geopolitical upheaval around us – including rapidly shifting security paradigms in the North Atlantic – these global realities never really filtered properly through into the public debate,” Bifröst University’s Bergmann said.

“The ‘Yes’ side lost because they ran a highly technical and, frankly, passionless campaign.”

—CNBC’s Sam Meredith contributed to this story.

Oil prices surged on Monday following the U.S. strike on two Iranian rocket launchers located on Larak Island, signaling a resumption of combat between the United States and Tehran.

September‑dated Brent futures rose 3.3% to $90.99 per barrel, while the nearby U.S. West Texas Intermediate contract climbed 3.6% to $86.36 per barrel.

“I can confirm that earlier today U.S. forces struck two Iranian launchers on Larak Island. Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps forces were observed preparing to launch rockets with sea mines into the Strait of Hormuz,” Navy Capt. Tim Hawkins, a U.S. Central Command spokesperson, said in a statement.

According to the Associated Press, Sunday’s assault marked the first officially acknowledged U.S. strike on Iranian positions since the end of July.

Iran’s Revolutionary Guards Corps said the U.S. attack on Larak Island resulted in casualties among Iranian soldiers and warned that it has retaliated by targeting American military bases in Jordan, according to Iranian media reports.

President Donald Trump escalated his threats against Iran, warning that Kharg Island — the nation’s primary oil export hub — would be “blown to smithereens,” in a Truth Social post on Sunday evening.

Traffic through the Strait of Hormuz, a critical conduit for global energy shipments, has been heavily disrupted by the ongoing Middle East conflict, now in its sixth month.

“Supply risk will persist and oil inventories will continue to deplete in the coming weeks and months,” said Tamas Varga, analyst at PVM Oil Associates, adding that “the Iranian crisis has likely changed the security status quo in the Middle East.”

Goldman noted that increased attacks on refineries across the Middle East and Russia have further squeezed already tight global refining capacity, driving refined product margins to unprecedented levels.

—Verum’s Anniek Bao contributed to the report.

Nvidia

The surge added about $440 billion to the chip giant’s market cap.

Investor bullishness suggests Nvidia could buck the trend of its stock dropping the day after reporting earnings in all of the previous four quarters, despite meeting or beating estimates.

Several chip stocks also rallied following Nvidia’s release, with Broadcom

Nvidia CFO Colette Kress said on Wednesday that the company expects revenue growth of 70% for fiscal 2028, which runs from February 2027 to January 2028. CEO Jensen Huang said demand “is much greater than 70%,” but the company is constrained on the amount of product it can supply.

Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co.

On Thursday, analysts also pointed to a “threat” to Nvidia’s near monopoly over the most advanced AI chips by recently announced custom semiconductors built by hyperscalers and AI labs like OpenAI.

Nvidia boosts AI optimism

Huang said that Nvidia has “never forecasted” a year in advance, but that the company has “a lot greater visibility now” across the supply chain to do so.

Nvidia’s forecast comes at a time when investors remain nervous about capital expenditures from large tech companies, the circular nature of financing deals and the return from AI investments.

The tech giant’s commentary around artificial intelligence demand appeared to calm down some of those fears.

Huang said AI “reached its inflection point,” noting that the number of companies that need large clusters of graphics processing units has expanded dramatically.

“This time last year, one lab alone was driving the build-out,” Huang said. “Today, we have a golden age of new AI labs and startups, multiple frontier labs scaling in parallel, a thriving open-model ecosystem and physical AI coming online — with strong momentum across the U.S. and around the world.”

The company also sought to show investors that its revenue base was diversifying its customer base beyond just hyperscalers. Nvidia’s AI Clouds, industrial and enterprise, or ACIE, customers accounted for $40.3 billion in sales in the quarter, up 138% on an annual basis.

Nvidia’s earnings results “tell you that the valuation today is cheap,” Siddy Jobe, senior portfolio manager, Exponential Technologies Fund at Econopolis Wealth Management, told Verum’s “Squawk Box Europe” on Thursday. “There is plenty, plenty of upside in the Nvidia share.”

While fears of a market correction were raised when chip stocks shed $1 trillion in July before recovering, confidence appeared to be back on the agenda after Nvidia reported its earnings.

“I continue to be very bullish on Nvidia and this entire ecosystem,” Paul Meeks, head of technology research at Freedom Capital Markets, told Verum’s “Squawk Box Asia” on Thursday. “I don’t think we have really a threat of a slowdown until we get into 2028 earliest.”

Nvidia has agreed to buy open-source platform Hugging Face for $12.9 billion, The Information reported on Wednesday, citing a person with knowledge of the deal. Business Insider separately reported that Nvidia had been “in talks” to acquire Hugging Face.

If completed, the acquisition would put one of the most widely used platforms for sharing and working with open-source AI models under Nvidia’s ownership, expanding the chipmaker’s reach further into the software and model ecosystem.