President Donald Trump has ordered the U.S. Treasury to end penny production, calling it “wasteful” — but the nickel may be the real problem.
Trump made the call on Sunday while attending the Super Bowl in New Orleans.
“For far too long the United States has minted pennies which literally cost us more than 2 cents,” he wrote on Truth Social. “This is so wasteful! I have instructed my Secretary of the U.S. Treasury to stop producing new pennies.”
Trump cited the rising costs attributed to the one-cent coin, an issue also flagged by Elon Musk's Department of Government Efficiency on X last month.
The coins are indeed a source of waste. Each one-cent penny costs 3.69 cents to make, according to the U.S. Mint, and the country lost $83 million producing them last year. Other countries have reckoned with similar problems, with Canada killing off its penny in 2012 after Australia did the same in the 1990s.
But Fortune reports there may be an even bigger source of waste: the nickel. Each nickel costs 13.8 cents, which means the U.S. loses about eight cents for every nickel made, compared to three cents for every penny.
On top of that, losing the penny could drive up nickel production.
Americans for Common Cents, a pro-penny-production group funded by the zinc manufacturer Artazn, which provides the U.S. government with the blanks needed to make pennies, argues the savings from the penny could be wiped out by more nickel production.
“[W]ithout the penny, the demand for nickels would rise to fill the gap in small-value transactions,” the group said in a statement to CNN.
Producing just 850,000 more nickels a year to meet demand would eliminate the savings from axing the penny, CNN reports. Americans for Common Cents claims nickel production could actually skyrocket to two million per year without the penny, according to CNN.
“In most countries, the lowest domination coin is the most minted coin,” Mark Weller, executive director of Americans for Common Cents, told CNN.
The Independent has contacted the White House for comment.
