by WorldTribune Staff / 247 Real News February 10, 2025
Noting that it costs more than two cents to make each one cent coin, President Donald Trump said on Sunday he has instructed Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent to have the Treasury Department stop making new pennies.
“For far too long the United States has minted pennies which literally cost us more than 2 cents,” Trump wrote in a post on Truth Social. “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 nations budget, even if it’s a penny at a time.”
Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) wrote in a post on X in January that the cost to make one cent was more than three cents, costing American 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,” DOGE noted.
The U.S. Mint — a bureau of the Department of the Treasury — said in its annual report that it lost $85.3 million on the nearly 3.2 billion pennies it produced in fiscal year 2024. That was the 19th consecutive fiscal year that the unit cost for pennies has been above face value, it adds.
The U.S. one cent coin is made mostly of zinc, with a copper overlay for color. Zinc’s price fluctuates from year to year. The cost per metric ton is now double what it was in 2016, according to data from the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis. In 2016, the U.S. was spending about 1.5 cents to mint each cent.
According to Americans for Common Cents, an organizations which represents the interests of zinc producers and coin manufacturers and collectors, the Trump administration’s plan is “fundamentally flawed,” arguing that it would increase the Mint’s losses in part by requiring it to produce more nickels.
“The logical and fiscally responsible solution isn’t to eliminate the penny but to reexamine how the Mint allocates its overhead costs and focus on reducing the cost of producing nickels,” the group said.
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