With a social media post during Super Bowl LIX, President Donald Trump, perhaps bored with the game, decided the moment was ripe to condemn the all-American penny as collateral DOGE damage. At least he didn’t accuse it of being “illegal DEI.”
“For far too long the United States has minted pennies which literally cost us more than 2 cents. This is so wasteful!” Trump posted on Truth Social during the Eagles’ win over Kansas City. “I have instructed my Secretary of the US Treasury to stop producing new pennies.”
While we weren’t expecting to learn of the penny’s demise on social media during the Super Bowl, although that’s our crazy new reality, let’s examine this policy decision on its face.
When it comes to eliminating the penny, we agree with Trump that it’s past time. Pennies have become more trouble than they’re worth, quite literally — while a penny’s value is just 1 cent, it actually costs more than 3 cents to mint one penny. So this was a rare Trumpian understatement.
Canada, which Trump may or may not be trying to annex as the 51st state, began phasing out its national 1-cent coin (also called a penny) in 2012. Back then, this editorial board urged the U.S. to follow suit. Penny fans laughed in our faces.
We are not calling for a cashless world — indeed, much ink has been spilled warning against the dangers of a digital-only society, and we believe that real cash should remain. A cashless society is easier to control, easier to track and trace … and it limits people’s options. But cash in today’s society should be able to carry its own weight, and if the penny’s value has sunk below its cost to manufacture, there’s no time like the present to make a change.
That said, as pennies phase out, new rules must be phased in, ideally by Congress, if Trump recalls that body. One helpful way to ease the transition is to ensure businesses aren’t charging amounts that can no longer be paid.
Imagine, in years to come, once all the pennies have either been hoarded away in antique shops or by collectors, checking out at a convenience store and being charged $3.11 for a large soda, a sum that cannot be paid precisely with modern coinage. In Canada, after politicians phased out that country’s penny, the government implemented a gradual phasing out period, during which time cash payments were rounded, up or down, to the nearest 5-cent increment. We should follow suit with a similar policy.
The U.S. lost $179 million on penny production in 2023, according to Elon Musk’s so-called Department of Government Efficiency. That’s a small figure in terms of U.S. spending, but still a significant amount of money the U.S. could be saving. Nobody’s yet heard from the Treasury, meaning this latest proclamation from the president may still be just that. Still, the penny’s time has come, and this is one order that seems to make sense no matter which way you look at it.
One of the main things we’ll miss about pennies is Lincoln’s presence on the coin — but for that, at least, we still have the $5 bill. Here’s to the elongated life of the near-worthless American penny — and to an important step toward a more efficient and sustainable monetary system.
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