The United States Mint has placed its final order for penny blanks and will cease production of the coin once this last batch is completed, the Treasury Department confirmed on Thursday.
Currently, it costs approximately 3.69 cents to make a single penny.
President Donald Trump announced in February that he was ordering his administration to end production of the coin, citing government waste.
“For far too long the United States has minted pennies which literally cost us more than 2 cents. This is so wasteful!” Trump wrote on Truth Social at the time. “I have instructed my Secretary of the US Treasury to stop producing new pennies.”
The Associated Press reports:
The U.S. Mint has made its final order of penny blanks and plans to stop producing the coin when those run out, a Treasury Department official confirmed Thursday. This move comes as the cost of making pennies has increased markedly, by upward of 20% in 2024, according to the Treasury.
By stopping the penny’s production, the Treasury expects an immediate annual savings of $56 million in reduced material costs, according to the official, who was not authorized to discuss the matter publicly and spoke on condition of anonymity to preview the news.
Last year was the 19th year that production costs of both the penny and nickel “remained above face value.”
In 2024, nickels cost 14 cents each to produce.
The Hill reports, “Per the latest U.S. Mint report, it costs less than six cents to make a dime ($0.0576). To make a quarter, it costs about 15 cents ($0.1468), and nearly 34 cents for a half-dollar ($0.3397).”
There are roughly 114 billion pennies in circulation, valued at $1.14 billion. Pennies will remain legal tender after the production halts.
Senators Jeff Merkley, a Democrat, and Mike Lee, a Republican, introduced a bill to kill the penny earlier this year.
“I’m pleased to see the Treasury Department taking a page from my ‘Make Sense, Not Cents Act,’” Lee said in a statement provided to Nexstar about the Treasury’s announcement. “Each penny costs four cents to make, so cutting this waste will save the American taxpayer over $85 million every year.”
“Ending penny production is the right thing to do, but let’s make sure we do it the right way,” Merkley added. “If President Trump is serious about ending this wasteful spending—with each penny costing 4 times more to mint than it’s worth — he should work with Congress to take up necessary legislation, like my bipartisan bill with Senator Mike Lee. It’s time to make sense, not cents.”
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