Treasury Department announces it will stop putting new pennies in circulation next year
Consumers holding pennies will still be able to use them for purchases. Businesses conducting cash transactions will have to start rounding to the nearest 5 cents.
Penny
The Treasury Department is scaling back production of pennies and will soon stop putting new ones into circulation, the department said in a statement Thursday.
A Treasury spokesman said the government has placed its last order for coin blanks (flat metal disc used in coin making) this month, and that the U.S. Mint will continue to make pennies only as long as there is an inventory of blanks, reported The Wall Street Journal.
Also, consumers who have pennies will still be able to use them to shop. However, businesses conducting cash transactions will have to start rounding to the nearest 5 cents.
The move comes as no surprise, in January the DOGE posted that the penny cost more than 3 cents to make and cost U.S. taxpayers more than $179 million in 2023.
According to the DOGE, the Mint produced more than 4.5 billion pennies in fiscal year 2023, about 40% of the 11.4 billion coins produced.
Also, in February, Donald Trump spoke about pennies on his Truth Social account:
"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."
LATEST
