As the Super Bowl entered the fourth quarter on Sunday, President Donald Trump made a surprise announcement—bringing an end to the production of the penny.
The copper-colored, Lincoln-embossed coin, larger than a dime but worth only one-tenth as much, will no longer be minted by the U.S. Treasury. Secretary of the Treasury Scott Bessent has been tasked with implementing the change.
“For far too long, the United States has minted pennies that literally cost us more than two cents each,” Trump stated. “This is so wasteful! I have instructed my Secretary of the Treasury to stop producing new pennies. Let’s rip the waste out of our great nation’s budget, even if it’s a penny at a time.”
In the Oval Office, behind the Resolute Desk, sits a sculpture of Abraham Lincoln resembling the iconic penny portrait—a subtle nod to the coin’s long history.
The push to eliminate pennies has been debated for decades, but no president had taken action—until now. Canada made a similar move in 2012, citing the same economic inefficiencies. In the U.S., the cost of minting pennies has consistently exceeded their face value, prompting economists and lawmakers to call for their removal.
In 2013, the Brookings Institution highlighted the financial burden in an analysis that stated, “Pennies and nickels cost more to make than they are worth. A penny costs nearly two cents to produce, and a nickel nearly eight cents. Since the U.S. Mint has produced nearly 92 billion pennies and 15 billion nickels since Y2K, the nation’s $1 billion loss from making these coins is not, like the coins themselves, chump change. Back in 1940, and even much after that, we got along just fine without coins that bought as little as pennies and nickels do today.”
Trump’s decision to phase out the penny aligns with his broader efforts to cut government waste and streamline federal spending. While critics argue that removing the penny could cause rounding issues in pricing, proponents point out that most transactions have already shifted to digital payments, reducing reliance on physical change.
In addition to scrapping the penny, Trump also announced that February 9 would officially be recognized as Gulf of America Day, following his recent executive orders renaming the Gulf of Mexico as the Gulf of America and restoring Alaska’s Denali to its former name, Mount McKinley.
With these sweeping changes, Trump continues to put his mark on both American history and geography—reshaping not just the economy, but the very map of the nation.