A top priority for President Donald Trump's administration is eliminating or reducing government inefficiencies and wasteful spending, and the costly production of the one-cent penny seemingly fits the bill.

The Treasury Department confirmed on Thursday that the U.S. Mint just made its final order for copper penny blanks and that production of the coin would cease sometime early next year when that last batch runs out, the New York Post reported.

The end of the penny, of which billions have been minted and remained in circulation since the nation's founding, was ordered in February by Trump.

Production cost outweighs worth

In a Feb. 9 Truth Social post, Trump wrote, "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," he added. "Let's rip the waste out of our great nations budget, even if it's a penny at a time."

The president was correct that it costs more to produce a penny than that same penny is worth, but the problem is actually even worse than he implied, as the latest figures from the U.S. Mint show that it costs U.S. taxpayers approximately 3.69 cents to produce each one-cent coin, per the Post.

That is a huge surge in production costs since just 10 years ago, when the price of a penny was 1.3 cents, with roughly 20% of that increase coming in 2024 alone.

Potential savings, but possible consequences loom

According to the Wall Street Journal, which was the first to report on the change, the impending demise of penny production will save taxpayers at least $56 million annually, though millions more will also likely be saved with the eliminated costs for storage facilities and transportation once the coins are fully phased out.

That could take a while, as the U.S. Mint was producing more than 3 billion pennies per year, and it is estimated that there are as many as 114 billion pennies currently in circulation.

One as-yet unknown factor in the eventual elimination of the penny is what will happen to retail pricing once the one-cent coins are no longer in wide use, with the main presumption being that sellers will be compelled to round prices up or down to the nearest five-cent mark, which is what other nations that eliminated their one cent coins have done.

That, however, could substantially increase public demand for nickels, which are even more costly and inefficient to produce, according to the Associated Press, with a cost to taxpayers of 14 cents to produce each 5-cent coin.

That realization has experts calling upon the government to either slow down the phase out of the penny or find a way to substantially reduce the costs of nickel production, if not both, in order to maintain the potential savings from doing away with pennies.

Will Congress codify decision?

As of now, the elimination of the penny appears to be solely an act of the executive branch that could potentially be reversed by the next administration.

That said, the Post noted that there are currently two bipartisan bills introduced in Congress that, if passed, would mandate by law the end of the penny after more than 230 years of use.