Trump announced on his social media platform on Sunday that he would be abolishing the penny.
He posted: "For far too long the United States has minted pennies, which literally cost us more than 2 cents. This is wasteful! I have instructed my Secretary of 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."
Honestly, I do not care about pennies. If he wants to focus on this for a while, fine. Get rid of pennies. We have more than enough in circulation. BUT, it looks like this may hit his supporters pretty hard in one Tennessee County that voted overwhelmingly for him.
OOPSIE.
WJHL News is reporting that the SOLE manufacturer of "penny blanks in the United States", called Artazn LLC is based out of Greene County, TN. The company has been in business for over 50 years. Pennies are not their only business, thankfully. They also manufacture and produce foreign currencies, automotive parts and zinc products.
The President of the Company told WJHL that the news is "disappointing", adding
“There potentially could be an impact,. We don’t know to what extreme yet because we don’t know exactly where this is headed. Fortunately, Artazn is not one-dimensional and so it could be minimal impact at this point. Having product diversification is important. But obviously, we like to have the United States currency first. So we’ll just have to see where this conversation goes.”
It costs almost 4 cents to create 1 penny. But, it doesn't end there. It costs almost 14 cents to create a nickel!
Hey, at least Trump didn't decide to replace Lincoln with his own head. That would be way worse!
