Trump instructs Treasury to halt penny production [View all]
Source: CNN Business
Published 10:36 PM EST, Sun February 9, 2025
CNN — President Donald Trump announced Sunday that he has instructed Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent to halt the production of pennies, citing the high cost of producing one cent.
“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 nations budget, even if it’s a penny at a time,” Trump said in a post to social media as he returned to Washington from the Super Bowl.
The penny has been under fire for years, with the movement to eliminate the penny picking up steam last month after Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency posted on X calling attention to the high cost of producing the single-cent coin.
Last year a New York Times Magazine story argued for abolishing the coin. “The necessity of abolishing the penny has been obvious to those in power for so long that the inability to accomplish it has transformed the coin into a symbol of deeper rot,” the piece noted.
Read more: https://www.cnn.com/2025/02/09/business/trump-treasury-penny-production-halt/index.html
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