US Mint moves forward with plans to kill the penny
Donald Trump has described the penny as ‘wasteful’.
The US Mint has made its final order of penny blanks and plans to stop producing the coin when those run out, a Treasury Department official confirmed on Thursday.
Stopping penny production is expected to produce an immediate annual savings of 56 million US dollars in reduced material costs, according to the official.
In February, President Donald Trump announced that he had ordered his administration to cease production of the one-cent coin.
At the time, the president wrote on his Truth Social site: “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.”
The nation’s treasury secretary has the authority to mint and issue coins “in amounts the secretary decides are necessary to meet the needs of the United States”.
Advocates for ditching the penny cite its high production cost — now at almost four cents per penny, according to the US Mint — and limited utility.
Fans of the penny cite its usefulness in charity drives and relative bargain in production costs compared with the nickel, which costs almost 14 cents to mint.
The Wall Street Journal first reported the news.
Pennies are the most popular coin made by the US Mint, which reported making 3.2 billion of them last year – more than half of all the new coins it made last year.
