President Donald Trump has ordered the United States Treasury to “stop producing new pennies” in an effort to eliminate waste as the cost of making new pennies is now greater than the value of the coins.
In a post on Truth Social during the Super Bowl on Sunday, Trump wrote, “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.”
According to the United States Mint, each penny cost 3.69 cents to make in Fiscal Year 2024, with a total cost of $119 million. Fox News reported that last year was the 19th consecutive year that the cost of producing the penny was greater than its value.
The Post Millennial reported that while there has been a push to end the use of pennies in the United States for multiple decades, no president has attempted to eliminate the coin prior to Trump. The outlet noted that Canada stopped using pennies in 2012 in order to save money since the cost of producing pennies is greater than the value of the coins.
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Shortly after Trump’s inauguration last month, the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) released a statement on X, formerly Twitter, saying, “The penny costs over 3 cents to make and cost US taxpayers over $179 million in FY2023. The Mint produced over 4.5 billion pennies in FY2023, around 40% of the 11.4 billion coins for circulation produced.”
According to the U.S. Mint’s website, the penny was one of the first coins to be produced by the Mint after it was established in 1792. The U.S. Mint’s website also notes that the penny was originally made of pure copper and was larger than today’s penny, which is now made largely of zinc.
As part of the push to eliminate the use of coins that cost more than they are worth, the Brookings Institute published an argument in 2013, saying, “Pennies and nickels cost more to make than they are worth. A penny costs nearly 2 cents to make, a nickel nearly 8 cents. And since the U.S. mint has minted nearly 92 billion pennies 15 billion nickels since Y2K, the nation’s $1 billion loss making these coins is not, like the coins themselves, chump change. Back in 1940, and even much after that, we got along just fine without coins that bought as little as pennies and nickels do today.”