WSJ Your Money Briefing - How Trump’s Plan to Halt Penny Production Could Impact Consumers

Episode Date: March 3, 2025

President Trump has instructed the U.S. Treasury to halt the minting of new pennies as part of an effort to cut down on what he called wasteful government spending. So how would a world without pennies look? Wall Street Journal reporters Oyin Adedoyin and Joseph Pisani join host Ariana Aspuru to discuss how the move could impact consumers and why one man has been lobbying to save the penny for the past three decades.   Sign up for the WSJ's free Markets A.M. newsletter.   Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

TD Direct Investing offers live support. So whether you're a newbie or a seasoned pro, you can make your investing steps count. And if you're like me and think a TFSA stands for Total Fund Savings Adventure, maybe reach out to TD Direct Investing. Here's your money briefing for Monday, March 3rd. I'm Mariana Aspuru for The Wall Street Journal. President Trump has called for a cut down on what he calls wasteful government spending.

On the list? Pennies. Last month, he instructed the U.S. Treasury to stop producing new ones. In a post on Truth Social, Trump called to, quote, rip the waste out of our great nation's budget, even if it's a penny at a time. But what does it mean for consumers if the U.S. ditches pennies?

Politicians, lawmakers, and economists have been asking that question for years. Why do we keep making pennies? Some economists say that it's mainly the inertia of just being used to pennies. But local business owners also worry that if we were to get rid of pennies, maybe that would inflate prices or discourage customers who are used to paying for things in cash from spending altogether. We'll hear from Wall Street Journal reporters Oyin Adedoyan and Joseph

Passani about how a world without pennies would look and why one man has been lobbying to save them for the past three decades. That's after the break. Lawmakers have long questioned the need for the smallest U.S. currency, the penny. But lobbyist Mark Weller has spent the past 30 years defending them. Here's WSJ reporter Joseph Bassani. He works for this company called Artisan, and this company actually makes all of our pennies in the U.S. They send these blanks to the U.S who stamps Abraham Lincoln on it, and then they're

the pennies that we see. And they get paid a lot to do this, so they don't want to lose that business. So they have this lobbyist in Washington who for 30 years has been on like 60 minutes. He writes letters to editors for newspapers, and he's on Capitol Hill talking to lawmakers to keep the penny. People who are against the penny, who think it should be abolished, say it costs too much to make. One of his arguments is that the nickel costs even more. His other argument is that if there's no more pennies, prices will be increased and that'll hurt Americans. In his 30 years, Mark Weller said this is the biggest challenge yet.

This is like the biggest fight of his life's work. So what could Trump's plan to stop minting the penny mean for consumers? WSJ reporter Oyin Adedoyin joins me. Oyin, how much does it cost to make a penny? Pennies might be small, but they actually cost a lot more than they're worth to make. Last year it cost nearly four cents to make a penny, and that's up from about three cents the year before. The U.S. Mint reported losing something like $85.3 million last year on the nearly $3.2 billion pennies

it produced. Does Trump have the authority to get rid of pennies? Economists say that Trump doesn't necessarily have the power to permanently eliminate the penny. That is reserved for Congress, which authorizes every coin and most metals that the mint manufactures. However, Trump could say, let's halt the decision of making new pennies. That is something that's very much

within the executive branch's power. I want to talk about what pennies are actually made of, because that's part of how expensive they are, right? Yeah, I mean, it's really interesting because everybody knows what a penny looks like, and it looks like copper, but pennies actually haven't been made of pure copper since the 1800s and now pennies are actually made mostly of zinc and part of that reason was to cut down on

how much it costs to make pennies because zinc is less than copper. This whole debate of how expensive they are isn't new. Yeah politicians, lawmakers and economists have been asking that question for years. Why do we keep making pennies? Some economists say that it's mainly the inertia of just being used to pennies. It's part of our monetary system. But local business owners also worry that if we were to get rid of pennies, maybe that would inflate prices or discourage customers who are used to paying for things in cash

altogether. I mean, if your whole life you've gone with pennies, it's tricky for people to think of a life without them. People have jars and jars of pennies in their homes. Some people even make their kitchen floors out of pennies, actually. I have seen that. So Oyen, many consumers have shifted away from physical cash to electronic payments. Where does that leave the penny?

Pennies are becoming increasingly homeless. I hate to say it, Americans throw away about $68 million worth of change a year. And this is money that we don't really think about. We kind of just maybe leave them at TSA or they end up under the couch or they end up even on the street on the floor and people don't even really pick them up anymore. Even the Mint estimated that it could save about 250 million over 10 years by suspending penny production. So let's say that the US decides to stop producing them. No more pennies. What would happen? Other countries have done away with it for years now,

and it hasn't had major inflationary effects on their economies. We would likely revert to the nickel. That would become the new low denomination currency, and cash transactions would be rounded then to the nearest five cents. So for example, something costing $19.82 would now become $19.80, while maybe $19.83 would become $19.85. And as far as when you're shopping online or using credit

cards or checks, nothing would change for you. What happens to the pennies that are already in rotation if we stop making them? Let's look at Canada for an example. Canada got rid of their one cent coin back in 2012, but they still allowed pennies to retain that one cent value. They weren't encouraging people to just throw away all the pennies they had. Those pennies still had value, but they weren't making any more of them. That's WSJ reporter Oyin Adedoyin, along with Joseph Passani.

And that's it for your Money Briefing. This episode was produced by Zoe Kolkin with supervising producer Melanie Roy. I'm Mariana Aspudu for The Wall Street Journal. Thanks for watching!