I remember penny candy and penny gumball machines. They are, of course, no longer available, and soon the penny itself will also join them in extinction.

Heads or Tails

By Andrew Moran, The Epoch Times President Donald Trump confirmed over the weekend that he requested the Treasury Department to stop producing pennies.

In a Feb. 9 Truth Social post, the president said he asked Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent to halt the production of one-cent coins, calling them “wasteful.”

“For far too long the United States has minted pennies which literally cost us more than 2 cents,” the president said. “This is so wasteful! I have instructed my Secretary of the U.S. 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.”

Last month, the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), the federal task force created by Trump to eliminate waste, cut spending, and improve efficiency, highlighted the costs behind the penny on X, writing that minting 4.5 billion pennies in 2023 cost taxpayers over $179 million.

Bessent has yet to address the status of the penny publicly.

Making Cents of the Cent The U.S. Mint created the nation’s first circulating penny in 1793, which was produced entirely from copper. Over the years, the cent’s metal content and design have changed.

Today, the penny is made primarily out of zinc with copper plating.

For the new administration, the issue is that the federal government spends more to create one-cent coins than its face value is worth.

According to the U.S. Mint’s annual report, the federal government spent about 3.7 cents in fiscal year 2024 to create a single penny. This was the 19th consecutive year production costs outpaced the penny’s face value. Approximately 3.2 billion pennies were manufactured last year, slightly down from fiscal year 2023.

One reason for the elevated production costs is ballooning zinc prices. While the industrial metal has eased from its March 2022 peak, prices have risen 92 percent over the last 10 years.

Over the decades, there have been congressional efforts to kill the penny.

The 1989 Price Rounding Act, the 2006 Currency Overhaul for an Industrious Nation (COIN), and the 2017 Currency Optimization Innovation and National Savings (COIN) Act would have eliminated the penny and mandated rounding prices to the nearest five cents. None of these bills became law.

Even former President Barack Obama weighed in on the issue.

“This is not going to be a huge savings for government, but anytime we’re spending more money on something that people don’t actually use, that’s an example of something we should probably change,” Obama said in a 2013 Google+ Hangout.

Obama may have touched upon a potential hurdle for the United States to overcome its penny fixation.

“We remember our piggy banks and counting up all our pennies and taking them in and getting a dollar bill or a couple dollars from them, and maybe that’s the reason people haven’t gotten around to it,” he said.

Other Countries Down to Their Last Penny The United States would not be the first country to ditch the penny.

In 1989, New Zealand stopped minting pennies because production costs exceeded their value. A few years later, Australia followed suit and discontinued its lowdenomination coin. The Netherlands adopted the policy in 2004.

Nickels are seen in a 2016 photo illustration. (Graeme Roy/The Canadian Press) Nickels are seen in a 2016 photo illustration. Graeme Roy/The Canadian Press In 2012, Canada began phasing out the penny and requested businesses to round prices to the nearest nickel for cash transactions. Digital transactions continued to be billed to the nearest cent. The penny is still accepted in commerce