Trump orders Treasury to suspend penny production

(CNN) — President Donald Trump announced Sunday that he has instructed Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent to halt the production of pennies, citing the high cost of producing one cent.

“For far too long the United States has minted pennies which literally cost us more than 2 cents. This is so wasteful! I have instructed my Secretary of the US Treasury to stop producing new pennies. Let’s rip the waste out of our great nations budget, even if it’s a penny at a time,” Trump said in a post to social media as he returned to Washington from the Super Bowl.

The penny has been under fire for years, with the movement to eliminate the penny picking up steam last month after Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency posted on X calling attention to the high cost of producing the single-cent coin.

Last year a New York Times Magazine story argued for abolishing the coin. “The necessity of abolishing the penny has been obvious to those in power for so long that the inability to accomplish it has transformed the coin into a symbol of deeper rot,” the piece noted.

CNN has reported the US Mint in 2023 reported it circulated around 4.1 billion pennies. In fiscal year 2024, the US Mint said in its annual report that the US penny costs about 3.7 cents to produce and distribute, up more than 20% from the previous year. The rising cost of metals, including zinc and copper, is part of the reason it’s getting more expensive to make the coin.

In 2013, a commentary piece on the Brooking Institution website took things a step further, arguing for the US not only to stop making the penny but also to halt production of the nickel.

“Perhaps, the problem is not that advocates have been too bold, but rather that they have been too timid — let’s drop not just pennies, but nickels too and stop using the rightmost decimal place at all,” the piece argued.

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