President Donald Trump on Sunday said he had ordered Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent to halt the production of new pennies.
"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.
"Let's rip the waste out of our great nations budget, even if it's a penny at a time," he added.
Trump's announcement comes weeks after Elon Musk's Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, criticized the costs of making pennies.
DOGE said in an X post on January 22 that producing pennies "cost US taxpayers over $179 million" in the 2023 fiscal year. Per the US Mint's 2023 report, pennies cost taxpayers $86 million — pennies and nickels combined cost nearly $179 million.
In the 2024 fiscal year, the unit cost of producing and distributing a penny was 3.69 cents, per the Mint — far outweighing its face value.
From 2023 to 2024, the unit cost of pennies jumped by 20.2%, largely because of a rise in raw material prices. While pennies used to be made of pure copper, they are now 97.5% zinc, the Mint said.
Global zinc prices have risen by about 33% over the past five years, while copper prices have risen by about 47%.
For decades, Washington has sporadically talked about axing the penny.
In 2013, President Barack Obama said the coin was "a good metaphor for some of the larger problems" of the government.
"Any time we're spending more money on something that people don't actually use, that's an example of something we should probably change," Obama said at the time.
In 2017, Sen. Mike Enzi of Wyoming and Sen. John McCain of Arizona introduced a bill that would have suspended the production of new pennies for a decade. The bill did not move forward.
