https://x.com/michellelprice/status/1925595697845297171
The U.S. Mint has made its final order of penny blanks and plans to stop producing the coin when those run out. The Treasury Department confirmed this move on Thursday. The cost of making pennies has increased markedly, by over 20% in 2024, according to the Treasury.
By stopping penny production, the Treasury expects an immediate annual savings of $56 million in reduced material costs. In February, President Donald Trump ordered his administration to cease production of the 1-cent coin. “For far too long the United States has minted pennies which literally cost us more than 2 cents.
https://x.com/KThomasDC/status/1925580450778513722
This is so wasteful!” Trump wrote on his Truth Social site. There are about 114 billion pennies currently in circulation in the United States, worth $1.14 billion. However, the Treasury says they are greatly underutilized.
https://x.com/SenWhitehouse/status/1925984255542280627
The penny was one of the first coins made by the U.S. Mint after its establishment in 1792.
Final order of penny blanks
The Philadelphia Mint and the Denver Mint are the only two that produce pennies for circulation.
Advocates for ditching the penny cite its high production cost, almost 4 cents per penny now, and limited utility. Fans of the penny point to its usefulness in charity drives and relative bargain compared to the nickel, which costs almost 14 cents to mint. Pennies are the most popular coin made by the U.S. Mint, which reported making 3.2 billion of them last year.
That’s more than half of all the new coins it made. Congress, which dictates currency specifications, could make Trump’s order permanent through law. However, past congressional efforts to ditch the penny have failed.
Two bipartisan bills to permanently kill the penny were introduced this year in the Senate and House. Professor Jay Zagorsky of Boston University supports ending penny production but says Congress must require rounding up in pricing to eliminate penny demand. Otherwise, he warns, nickel demand will increase, which are even more expensive to produce.
Mark Weller, executive director of Americans for Common Cents, says “there has been an evolution over the past six months that inevitably the production of the penny will be halted.” His group advocates for the U.S. to find ways to reduce the cost of producing the nickel, especially since it will be more in demand once the penny is totally eliminated from circulation.