Two cents can’t even get you a penny.
President Trump’s newly minted Department of Government Efficiency has a shiny new target for its cost-cutting mandate — the United States penny which now costs over three cents to manufacture.
The official X account for DOGE, the reform department headed by billionaire Elon Musk, shared facts about penny production in the United States — which is an affront to both efficiency and frugality.
“The penny costs over 3 cents to make and cost U.S. taxpayers over $179 million in FY2023. The Mint produced over 4.5 billion pennies in FY2023, around 40% of the 11.4 billion coins for circulation produced,” DOGE tweeted.
The post references an article from Fortune citing the US Mint, which states the US spent $179 million in 2023 minting both pennies and nickels.
Last year was the 19th consecutive year a penny has cost more to produce than its face value, according to the March article.
Pennies cost 3.7 cents to make in 2024, according to the US Mint.
In 2016, it cost the US just 1.5 cents to produce a penny — with the government printing only $46 million worth of the one-cent marks, according to CBS News.
The nickel is the only other US note with a production cost exceeding its face value. In 2023, each nickel cost 11.5 cents to make, according to the US Mint.
The high prices are incurred due to fluctuations in metal market prices, manufacturing, and transportation costs.
Pennies, which are commonly believed to be made from copper, are mostly made of zinc with merely a copper overlay to give the impression of a solid copper coin.
Zinc has doubled in price since 2016, according to data from the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis.
DOGE, headed up by the world’s richest man, has promised to cut as much as $500 billion annually in wasteful spending across the executive branch departments.
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