Trump directs Treasury to stop making pennies

President Trump announced Sunday that he asked the Treasury Department to stop producing pennies, calling the 1-cent coin wasteful.

He said in a Truth Social post that he told Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent to end minting the small-value coins with former President Lincoln’s image on them.

“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,” Trump said.

The cost of making a penny was nearly 3.7 cents in fiscal 2024, the 19th consecutive fiscal year the coin has cost above face value to make, according to the U.S. Mint’s annual report.

Pennies were made of copper before 1962 and are currently made majority of zinc but with copper plating. Lincoln has been on the penny since 1909, and the penny was the first coin made by the U.S. Mint, according to the Treasury Department.

Billionaire tech entrepreneur Elon Musk, who has been tasked by Trump with cutting waste in the U.S., targeted the penny in a post on his social platform X last month.

“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. Penny (or 3 cents!) for your thoughts,” Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency said.