In February of 2025, President Donald Trump announced that he wants to eliminate the production of the penny. Although this is not official yet, Trump has asked the United States Treasury Department to stop minting pennies. Officially eliminating the production of the penny has its benefits and drawbacks.

Getting rid of the penny has benefits, one being the process of making pennies which is both financially and environmentally costly. It cost 3.69 cents to make the penny in 2024, meaning it costs more to mint than what the value of the penny actually is. Along with financial difficulty, making pennies also has environmental issues. Pennies are mainly made out of zinc and copper which both produce a lot of carbon dioxide when being transported. Over the last 35 years, there has been a total of 107 million pounds of carbon dioxide emitted just from pennies being delivered from the Mint to banks.

Another benefit of discarding the penny is saving time during checkout without hurting the customer or business. Stores have found that pennies add around two to 2.5 seconds to each transaction. As a result of this extra time, the average customer wastes about 12 minutes a year by paying with pennies. Also, by rounding up everything to the nearest nickel, transactions become a lot quicker. This would make it easier to figure out how much money the customer gets back, and there is no wasted time counting out all the pennies.

There are also cons about getting rid of the penny. Some charities raise money by collecting pennies. This includes foundations such as the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society, the Salvation Army, and the Ronald McDonald House. These charities raise money by asking people to donate pennies. It is a simple way to get money and a great way to get children involved in donating. In 2009, students ended up donating over 15 billion pennies, which gave the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society $150 billion dollars for blood and cancer treatment. Getting rid of the penny would decrease the amount of money donated to some charities.

Along with charities losing pennies, another con is inflation. Items will have to round to the nearest five cents if there are no pennies. This decision is up to the business, but most will choose to round up to the nearest five cents instead of rounding down. This will cause problems with low-income families whenever they buy gas or groceries since they are more likely to use cash instead of a credit card.

Getting rid of the penny has its pros and cons. Although eliminating the penny has financial and environmental benefits and saves time during transactions, it could also cause inflation and decrease the amount of money donated to charity. Overall, if the penny is no longer made, there will be many new adjustments.

Works Cited

Adedoyin, Oyin, and Dalvin Brown. What Trump’s Plan to Stop Minting Pennies Means for Consumers. 2025. The Wall Street Journal, https://www.wsj.com/personal-finance/trump-penny-us-mint-explained-36db52f6. Accessed 14 February 2025.

The Editors of ProCon, editor. U.S. Penny. 2025. Britannica, https://www.britannica.com/procon/US-penny-debate. Accessed 18 March 2025.

Hayes, Alexander. More Americans want to drop the penny than to save it. 2025, https://today.yougov.com/economy/articles/51865-more-americans-want-to-drop-the-penny-than-to-save-it. Accessed 20 March 2025.

Weller, Mark. “In Defense of the Penny.” Inside Sources, 21 August 2018, https://insidesources.com/in-defense-penny/.