Texas, Trump’s Hope Is To Eliminate New Pennies

This is yet another interesting potential move by President Trump. On Sunday night, the commander in Chief revealed that he's taken steps to drastically change the American currency.

It turns out the price to produce a penny is more costly than it is worth. 

On Super Bowl Sunday, Trump took to his Truth Social site and wrote, “For far too long the United States has minted pennies which literally cost us more than 2 cents...I have instructed my Secretary of the US Treasury to stop producing new pennies.”

It's not clear if the President has the power to eliminate forms of currency independently. Likely, Congress will have to approve this type of change.

President Trump has had his sights on the penny since his campaign began. According to DOGE, "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."

The U.S. Mint reported "losing $85.3 million in the 2024 fiscal year on the nearly 3.2 billion pennies produced. Every penny cost nearly $0.037 — up from $0.031 the year before." Are pennies worth that to us?

Minting the nickel, too, costs more than its value. At this point, though, there has been no indication that its existence is in jeopardy.

I'm no economist, but if we can save $85 million every year by halting the production of pennies, it might not be a bad idea. Of course, I have zero idea what the ramifications of something like this might be. But let's get crazy, y'all!