How Trump could get rid of the penny, and what could come later for his pocket change

President Donald Trump The plans presented on Sunday to stop the production of The Penny, but obtaining that ongoing initiative requires some additional steps and possibly the approval of Congress.

In addition, while Trump said he instructed the Department of the Treasury to stop coining them due to their high costs, supporters of the penny claim that it is wiser to evaluate the changes in the Nickel.

“For too long, the United States has coined cents that literally cost us more than 2 cents,” Trump wrote in Truth Social on Sunday. “This is so wasteful! I have ordered my Secretary of the United States Treasury to stop producing new cents.”

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In fact, producing cents is even more expensive than Trump’s numbers. According to a Mint 2024 report in US, it costs almost 3.69 cents to coin a single penny. The coins are mainly made of zinc and then copper covered.

Trump’s statement occurs after Tesla and the CEO of Spacex, Elon Musk, which directs the new Government Efficiency Department (Doge), published in X in January how expensive the cents are.

Doge has the task of identifying ways to eliminate waste, and has caused changes, including the destruction of the United States agency of $ 40 billion for international development (USAID), which provides help to impoverished countries and assistance For development.

Even so, there are Pentavo defenders. The Americans for common cents, an organization that gives Congress and the White House an investigation into the value of the penny, said that efforts are better aimed at reducing the cost of production for nickel.

The nickel, for a value of five cents, cost approximately 13.8 cents to the mint, according to the Mint 2024 report in US.

“The logical and fiscal solution is not to eliminate the penny, but to focus on producing a cheaper nickel,” said the executive director of the Americans for Cents Common Cels, Mark Weller, in a statement on January 23. “This approach would address the true driver of losses while preserving the functionality of small denominations in everyday transactions.”

While the waters are a bit murky in the next steps, experts say that Congress would probably need to get involved and approve legislation to comply with Trump’s wishes. And, historically, the previous attempts in Congress to eliminate the currency have failed.

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“The process of discontinuating the penny in the US. UU. It is not clear. It would probably require an act of Congress, but the Treasury Secretary could simply stop the coined of new cents,” Robert Triest, professor of economy. Northeastern University, He told NortheAStern Global News.

Even so, there is a bipartisan interest in Capitol Hill to modify the cents. In 2023, Sens. Joni Ernst, R-Iowa, and Maggie Hasson, Dn.H., reintroduced the legislation to alter the composition of the penny to reduce costs.

“It is absolutely incapacitated that US taxpayers spend ten cents to do only one nickel. Only Washington could lose money earning money,” Ernst said in a statement in April 2023. “This bipartisan effort will modify the composition of certain currencies to reduce costs to the time that allows a perfect transition to circulation.

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Even so, a change of composition will produce cheaper results. Report 2024 Mint said that options for different metal compositions are not available to reduce production costs to nominal value.

However, there is still some precedent for change, and Congress has previously acted to suspend the coined of new currencies. The legislative branch authorized the discontinuation of new mid -center coins in 1857.

Associated Press contributed to this report.