The US Coin Donald Trump Wants To Get Rid Of

Assuming you have followed the news since January, you'll know that President Donald Trump has been implementing numerous policies to significantly alter the U.S. political and economic landscape. For one thing, Trump's proposed tariffs have received a lot of attention, especially as he threatens to impose them on former allies and close neighbors. For instance, there are a number of goods we buy from Canada that would be heavily impacted by tariffs, as well as at least five items we buy from Mexico that would also take a hit. Plus, Trump's tariffs could even change the way you eat at restaurants, so it's no wonder this particular policy has been getting so much attention.

However, Trump is now also taking his fight for U.S. economic dominance to the world of currency. To be more specific, in February 2025, Trump set his eye on limiting the amount of change you might find in your purse or pocket in the future — by directing the Treasury Department to stop producing new pennies. Let's explore why Trump came to this decision, and why implementing this decision might not be as helpful as he would like to believe.   

The U.S. Mint — the Treasury bureau responsible for making the country's coins and medals — revealed in its 2024 Annual Report that, although the Mint circulated 44.1% fewer coins to the Federal Reserve Bank, the circulation of pennies actually increased by 14.6%. Even more, pennies accounted for 54% of all coins circulated in 2024. Similarly, the report confirmed that the cost of generating a penny rose 20.2% in 2024 to 3.69 cents.

President Trump has cited the cost of creating the coin as the primary reason to discontinue manufacturing them. In a Truth Social post, Trump stated, "For far too long the United States has minted pennies which literally cost us more than 2 cents. This is so wasteful!" The post goes on to confirm his decision to order the U.S. Treasury Secretary to stop producing them. At face value, it may actually make sense to discontinue the one cent currency, especially since that currency costs significantly more to make than it is worth. However, there's an excellent counter argument to be made for not getting rid of pennies, so don't go tossing out your change just yet — especially since there could be some potentially valuable coins hidden in your spare change.

While the current cost of making pennies is over three cents, the cost of the closest alternative — nickels — is even higher. The cost of producing a nickel went up 19.4%in 2024, meaning they currently cost 13 cents to make. Meanwhile, dimes, quarters, and half dollars all cost far less to make than their value. This is part of why the U.S. Mint actually reduced production of nickels in 2024 by 86% – down to 202 million from a previous 1.4 billion. So while producing fewer pennies will save the U.S. roughly 2.7 cents per penny, experts suggest that the country would end up needing to produce more nickels to fill the gap. This would lead to an extra cost of 8 cents per nickel, or just over three times the cost of producing a penny. 

Compared with 2024 penny production numbers of 3.2 billion, this represents a huge difference that would need to be covered by producing far more of the expensively made nickel. Based on the numbers, the cost of producing hundreds of thousands more nickels to make up for the loss of 3.2 billion pennies would not only entirely wipe out any savings from stopping penny production, but it would also cost more than just keeping the penny. Considering all the times Donald Trump went into bankruptcy, it isn't too surprising that getting rid of the penny doesn't really add up.