The President of the United States, Donald Trump ordered the Department of the Treasury to stop minting new pennies, as producing this coin, popularly known as ‘pennies’, is very costly for the nation.
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“For too long, the United States has been minting pennies that literally cost us more than 2 cents. This is so wasteful!... I have instructed my Secretary of the Treasury of the United States to stop producing new pennies,” Trump notified on Sunday night through his social network Truth Social.
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NBC News highlighted that the president did not present this plan to stop producing pennies during his campaign, but the idea had already been mentioned last month by Elon Musk in a post on X, where he said that pennies cost the United States too much.
The aforementioned source stated that each penny cost almost $0.037 in 2024, while in 2023 the cost was $0.031 the previous year. It was specified that in the fiscal year of 2024, $85.3 million were lost with the nearly 3.2 billion pennies produced until September.
The decision to stop producing pennies is one of the radical measures ordered by President Donald Trump, who has also enacted other measures such as mass deportation of undocumented immigrants, the elimination of gender diversity, and the renaming of the Gulf of Mexico.
Can Donald Trump order the production of pennies to stop?
NBC News highlighted that it is still not clear whether President Donald Trump can halt the production of pennies, as matters related to coins, including their production and design, fall under the jurisdiction of Congress.
However, the aforementioned media outlet also presented the analysis of Robert K. Triest, an economics professor at Northeastern University, who indicated that the Secretary of the Treasury can indeed do it.
“The process of discontinuing the penny in the United States is not clear. It would likely require an act of Congress, but the Secretary of the Treasury could simply stop the minting of new pennies,” Triest stated.