President Donald Trump announced at the end of the Super Bowl on Sunday night that pennies would no longer be made.
The United States Treasury will no longer make pennies, which are copper-colored coins with Abe Lincoln on them. Pennies are bigger than a dime but only worth a tenth of what a dime is worth. It will be up to Secretary of the Treasury Scott Bessent to get rid of them, which seems likely following Trump’s order.
“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 nation’s budget, even if it’s a penny at a time,” Trump noted in a social media post.
Trump has a sculpture of Lincoln in the Oval Office that looks like the portrait on the penny. It is behind the Resolute Desk.
Many have been trying to get rid of pennies for decades, but no president has been brave enough to do it. In 2012, Canada got rid of its pennies for the same reason—to save money. For the same reason as in the US, it cost more to print the penny than it was worth.
The Brookings Institute wrote an anti-penny letter in 2013 that said, “Making pennies and nickels cost more than they are worth.”
It takes almost two cents to make a penny and almost eight cents to make a nickel. Since the year 2000, the U.S. Mint has made almost 92 billion pennies and 15 billion nickels. This means that the country lost $1 billion in making these coins, which is not small change.
In 1940 and even after that, we didn’t need coins that were worth as little as pennies and nickels are now.
“Worse still, pennies and nickels cost more to make than they are worth. A penny costs nearly 2 cents to make, a nickel nearly 8 cents. And since the U.S. mint has minted nearly 92 billion pennies 15 billion nickels since Y2K, the nation’s $1 billion loss making these coins is not, like the coins themselves, chump change. Back in 1940, and even much after that, we got along just fine without coins that bought as little as pennies and nickels do today,” The Brookings Institute wrote.
“The idea of deep-sixing the penny is not new. For years people have been proposing that the United States save money and enhance convenience by abolishing the penny. In effect, if we dropped the nickel too, we would simply be treating the last digit of every price as zero. Easier math. Less stuff in our pockets,” the outlet added.
“The Canadians have already moved in this direction. They stopped minting pennies last year. Retailers are no longer required to offer pennies in change. Non-cash transactions can still be denominated in hundredths of the Canadian dollar. The value of the Canadian dollar has remained strong. Supporters of the penny claim that every price will be rounded up, generating inflation. But there is no evidence that dropping the penny has triggered Canadian inflation. Nor would it here,” it continued.
“Another argument advanced by penny traditionalists is that dropping it would hurt the poor, who are reported to be the beneficiaries of penny drives run by some charities. This argument rings especially hollow at a time when, in the name of inflation, the Congress is willing to lower food assistance for the poor. A billion dollars more in food support, in exchange for whatever charitable largess the penny brings would be a splendid trade,” the Brookings Institute concluded in its analysis.
