Donald Trump has directed the US Treasury Department to stop minting new pennies as the president agreed to yet another of Elon Musk’s ideas amid growing concern about the Tesla CEO’s rapidly expanding power.
Trump called pennies “wasteful” as he announced the decision on his Truth Social site during his Super Bowl appearance on Sunday night. He wrote: “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.”
It marks the latest move in the Trump administration’s controversial efforts to remake America with a series of sweeping changes and comes just weeks after Musk’s so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) highlighted the high cost of pennies in a post on X. “The penny costs over 3 cents to make and cost US taxpayers over $179 million in FY2023. The Mint produced over 4.5 billion pennies in FY2023, around 40% of the 11.4 billion coins for circulation produced. Penny (or 3 cents!) for your thoughts,” the department wrote.
During the 2024 fiscal year, the US Mint reported losing $85.3 million on the nearly 3.2 billion pennies it produced. Each penny cost nearly $0.037 to produce — up from $0.031 the year before. It’s not clear whether Trump actually has the power to unilaterally eliminate the penny as currency specifications are dictated by Congress.
But Robert K. Triest, an economics professor at Northeastern University, says there may be a way. “The process of discontinuing the penny in the U.S. is a little unclear. It would likely require an act of Congress, but the Secretary of the Treasury might be able to simply stop the minting of new pennies,” he explained last month.
Trump’s decision on the penny appears to simply be the latest in a series of moves encouraged by his new “special government employee” Musk. In just a matter of weeks, the Space X founder has thrown US politics into chaos with his attempts to gut the federal government.
Musk has so far led efforts to seize access to sensitive government databases, been largely behind attempts to get federal employees to take “deferred resignations” and has declared the shutdown of an entire federal agency. But the controversial decisions haven’t come without pushback as Musk and Trump’s attempts to dismantle government agencies and eliminate large swaths of the federal workforce are now being held up by the courts.
On Saturday a federal judge’s decision blocked Musk’s DOGE from accessing Treasury Department records that contain sensitive personal data, such as Social Security and bank account numbers for millions of Americans. Musk then called for the judge who ruled against him to be impeached. He complained: “A corrupt judge protecting corruption. He needs to be impeached NOW!”
Judges have also temporarily blocked Trump from moving forward with mass federal buyouts and from placing thousands of USAID workers on leave. Trump administration officials have now begun questioning the judiciary’s authority to serve as a check on executive power.
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“If a judge tried to tell a general how to conduct a military operation, that would be illegal. If a judge tried to command the attorney general in how to use her discretion as a prosecutor, that’s also illegal. Judges aren’t allowed to control the executive’s legitimate power,” Vice President JD Vance wrote on X on Sunday morning.
But Democrats warn Musk and Trump’s efforts signify a “serious Constitutional crisis”. “I think this is the most serious Constitutional crisis the country has faced, certainly, since Watergate,” Sen. Chris Murphy, D-Conn., said on ABC’s This Week. “This is a red alert moment when this entire country has to understand that our democracy is at risk,” he added.
