‘For far too long the United States has minted pennies which literally cost us more than 2 cents,’ the president stated.
President Donald Trump said on Sunday that he has directed the Treasury Department to stop minting pennies, citing the high cost of producing the one-cent coin.
“For far too long the United States has minted pennies which literally cost us more than 2 cents. This is so wasteful!” Trump wrote in a Truth Social post.
“I have instructed my Secretary of the U.S. Treasury to stop producing new pennies. Let’s rip the waste out of our great [nation’s] budget, even if it’s a penny at a time.”
The Trump administration has focused on reducing federal spending by targeting various federal agencies and laying off workers, except for those handling essential duties.
The U.S. Mint, the government bureau responsible for making coinage, reported last year that the cost of producing pennies was 3.69 cents per coin in the fiscal year 2024, up from 3.07 cents in the previous fiscal year. The U.S. Mint said that this marked the 19th consecutive year the production cost remained above the coin’s face value.
The increase in coin production cost has been largely caused by the rising prices of metals, with the average price of copper increasing by 5.4 percent to over $8,889 per tonne last year, according to the bureau.
The penny was one of the first coins made by the U.S. Mint after the bureau was founded in 1792. The original penny was made of copper and depicted a woman with flowing hair, which symbolized liberty. Today, pennies are made of copper and zinc and have featured the image of President Abraham Lincoln since 1909, according to the Treasury Department.
The Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), an advisory committee headed by tech billionaire Elon Musk, previously stated that producing the one-cent coin has cost U.S. taxpayers millions of dollars.
“The penny costs over 3 cents to make and cost US taxpayers over $179 million in FY2023,” DOGE stated on the social media platform X on Jan. 22. “The Mint produced over 4.5 billion pennies in FY2023, around 40% of the 11.4 billion coins for circulation produced.”
