President Trump halts penny production

TheStreet’s Conway Gittens brings you the biggest news of the day, including why Donald Trump has instructed the U.S. Mint to stop producing pennies.

Transcript

00:00President Trump is looking to fix the federal budget one penny at a time.

00:04Literally. Trump ordered the end of the production of the one cent coin because

00:08it costs more than a cent to make it. The U.S. Mint said a penny cost 3.7 cents to

00:13make and distribute, up 20% from the previous year. In a post on Truth Social,

00:18Trump said, quote, this is so wasteful. I have instructed my Secretary of the U.S.

00:23Treasury to stop producing new pennies. Let's rip the waste out of our great

00:28nation's budget, even if it's a penny at a time. The cost of the penny has gone

00:33up due to the rising cost of its components, which are largely zinc and

00:36copper. The penny is one of the first coins ever made by the U.S. Mint once it

00:42was established back in 1792 and has boasted the likeness of President

00:46Abraham Lincoln since 1909. As of 2023, there were about 4.1 billion pennies in

00:53circulation. According to the New York Times, the penny needs to go because we

00:57hoard pennies instead of actually using them as currency. And that's for those of

01:02us out there who even use cash. With the rise of digital payments, most people

01:06barely even touch a penny. The U.S. Mint, however, keeps on making them. Like many

01:12things, Trump's declaration alone won't end the penny as we know it. Since the

01:16penny was created by an act of Congress in 1792, it's going to take an act of

01:21Congress to put it to a cent-less grave. Turning to Monday's market action, stocks

01:27are staging a rebound after inflation worries knocked the wind out of the

01:30market on Friday. McDonald's is trading higher even though quarterly sales

01:34missed expectations. The shortfall was due to a drop in U.S. sales caused by an

01:39E. coli outbreak in October. From the New York Stock Exchange, I'm Conway Gittins

01:44with The Street.