Trump wants to stop U.S. production of pennies
By Casey Harper
The Center Square
President Donald Trump said late Sunday that he has ordered the U.S. Treasury Department to stop producing pennies.
Pennies famously cost more than a penny to produce, putting them in the crosshairs of Trump and DOGE’s government efficiency push.
"For far too long the United States has minted pennies which literally cost us more than 2 cents," Trump wrote on TruthSocial, his social media site. "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 added.
DOGE posted on X last month critical of the penny’s cost, hinting at its fate.
"The penny costs over 3 cents to make and cost US taxpayers over $179 million in FY2023," DOGE wrote on X. "The Mint produced over 4.5 billion pennies in FY2023, around 40% of the 11.4 billion coins for circulation produced. Penny (or 3 cents!) for your thoughts."
According to the U.S. Mint’s latest report, the cost of all coins is on the rise. From the Mint’s 2024 report:
"FY 2024 unit costs increased for all circulating denominations compared to last year. The penny’s unit cost increased 20.2 percent, the nickel’s unit cost increased by 19.4 percent, the dime’s unit cost increased by 8.7 percent, and the quarter-dollar’s unit cost increased by 26.2 percent. The unit cost for pennies (3.69 cents) and nickels (13.78 cents) remained above face value for the 19th consecutive fiscal year."
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Comment
Pennies
Canada still has the penny in circulation but quit producing them in 2012. I don’t believe smelting is the process that would be used. It would be simply melting the coins. In 1943 they produced the steel penny to save the copper.
The concept of discontinuing the penny is great but the next coin up (nickel) is a worse offender as far as cost. Pennies cost 3.7 cents to make while a nickel costs almost 14 cents to make. The dime costs somewhere near 6 cents to produce so let’s just jump to the dime and quit producing pennies and nickels.
Ditch Both The Penny And Nickel
Round up to the dime and submit as extra sales tax to the federal government. I charge everything for rewards points and rarely use cash. No e-payment services either. All have been hacked one or more times. No paper checks. Routing numbers and account numbers are easily stolen from mail boxes or USPS postal collection boxes
Changes...
Yes, ditch the penny. But what shall we do with our current pennies? Do we turn the pennies in to be smelted back down? Older pennies have more copper in them, if I'm not mistaken. Some were steel during WWII. Which brings up another suggestion: Ditch the paper $1 bill. Let's mint $1 and $2 coins instead. Will that be cheaper in the long run? (I believe Canada has done these measures of change over the years. We should ask them "How's it goin', eh?")