President Trump Calls for Halt on Minting New Pennies to Cut Government Spending
Former U.S. President Donald Trump has announced that he instructed the U.S. Treasury to cease the production of new penny coins.
Trump argued that the move would reduce government spending, citing the fact that minting pennies costs more than two cents each.
“This has been wasteful for far too long,” Trump wrote on his Truth Social platform after returning to Washington from the Super Bowl.
“I’ve directed my Secretary of the U.S. Treasury to stop producing new pennies,” he added. “Let’s eliminate waste from our nation’s budget, even if it’s just a penny at a time.”
The one-cent coin, also known as a penny, was first issued by the federal government in 1793.
However, the issue of eliminating the pennies was part of Trump’s election campaign.
Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency, DOGE, raised the prospect in a post on X last month highlighting the production cost.
The United States Mint reportedly lost $85.3 million in the 2024 fiscal year that ended in September on the nearly 3.2 billion pennies it produced.
