President Donald Trump announced that he has instructed the Treasury Department to halt the minting of new pennies due to the increasing cost of production.
“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 post Sunday night on his Truth Social site. “I have instructed my Secretary of the US Treasury to stop producing new pennies.”
Trump’s decision is the latest in a series of swift actions by his administration, using executive orders and proclamations to address issues ranging from immigration and diversity to the name of the Gulf of Mexico.
Trump never mentioned eliminating the penny during his campaign. However, Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency brought up the issue last month in an X post highlighting its cost.
Musk stated that producing 4.5 billion pennies in Fiscal Year 2023 cost taxpayers over $179 million.
Trump stated on Truth Social, shortly after leaving the Super Bowl in New Orleans, that the penny—one of the first coins minted after the U.S. Mint’s establishment in 1792—now costs over two cents to produce.
The U.S. Mint reported an $85.3 million loss in the 2024 fiscal year, ending in September, from producing nearly 3.2 billion pennies. Each penny cost about $0.037 to mint, up from $0.031 the previous year.
“Let’s rip the waste out of our great nations budget, even if it’s a penny at a time,” Trump wrote.
