A Penny for Your Thoughts? Trump Orders US Treasury to Suspend Production of the Cent

We've all been there. You use cash at the check-out counter, and the bill rings up $10.02. You don't have any change. Except now you're about to, as the changer spits out 98 cents. You're not a happy camper: those dang two cents did it to you, again!

While many have grumbled about the mere existence of the lonely penny for years, nobody has done anything about it. Until now.

President Donald Trump announced via his Truth Social account on Sunday that he had ordered the U.S. Treasury Department to halt production of the lowly penny.

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.

"Even if it's a penny at a time" has a nice ring to it, but in reality a penny now costs the Treasury — U.S. taxpayers —nearly four cents to produce.

🚨 BREAKING: President Trump instructs the Secretary of the Treasury to stop production of the penny pic.twitter.com/ZuVkDRabch
— Rapid Response 47 (@RapidResponse47) February 10, 2025

The U.S. Mint reported production of nearly 3.2 billion pennies in fiscal year 2024, resulting in a loss of $85.3 million. A penny cost nearly $0.037 — up from $0.031 the year before.

While $85.3 million might be a toss in the bucket of the more than $1 billion per day in spending cuts Elon Musk's DOGE (Department of Government Efficiency) claims to have uncovered, it's still more than $85 million, and the cost would surely continue to increase if production of the penny were to continue.

SPEAKING OF DOGE...

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Here's more via Forbes:

It is unclear how the Congress will respond to Trump’s decision on suspending the minting of pennies. Even if the move garners support in both GOP-controlled chambers, lawmakers will likely have to pass legislation on cash transactions that are not divisible by the next lowest denomination—the five cent coin. Previous legislative efforts have called for either rounding up or rounding down prices to the nearest five cents.
The nickel or five cent coin also costs more to make than its face value. According the U.S. Mint, each nickel cost 13.78 cents to manufacture in FY 2024. In total the mint lost $17.7 million on the production of nickels last year.

But — and try to control your shock and amazement — an activist group that opposes the end of penny production pushed back against DOGE's recommendation in December. Forbes continued:

Americans for Common Cents, a group which has lobbied for the continued production of the pennies, pushed back against DOGE’s post late last month, saying it “completely misses the mark.” The group argued that “while the penny’s production cost exceeds its face value, the real culprit for losses is the nickel, which costs nearly 14 cents per unit to produce.
By eliminating the penny, the Mint would inevitably need to produce more nickels, compounding the losses associated with nickel production.” The group’s executive director Mark Weller has previously confirmed that Artazn—the company that sells zinc coin blanks to U.S. Mint for penny production—is one of its backers.

Fine. Stop producing the penny and the nickel. Oh, wait— then what would become of the dime?

As Gilda Radner's classic character Roseanne Roseannadanna told us in the early days of "Saturday Night Live":