Finance

Trump aims at ‘wasteful’ spending by ordering end to penny production

Published

3 months ago

February 10, 2025

U.S. President Donald Trump meets with Japan’s Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba (not pictured) at the White House in Washington, U.S., Feb. 7, 2025.

Kent Nishimura | Reuters

President Donald Trump ordered a halt to the production of new pennies, which he said will help reduce “wasteful” government spending.

“For far too long the United States has minted pennies which literally cost us more than 2 cents,” Trump said in a Truth Social post. “This is so wasteful! I have instructed my Secretary of the US Treasury to stop producing new pennies. Let’s rip the waste out of our great nations budget, even if it’s a penny at a time,” Trump wrote.

It’s not clear whether the president has the authority to stop the manufacture of the currency. According to the U.S. Constitution, coinage power, as recognized by the Supreme Court, is “exclusive” to Congress. Federal law says the Treasury Secretary can mint and issue coins as necessary for the needs of the United States.

But at least one analyst on Wall Street expects that the penny’s days are numbered. TD Cowen’s Jaret Seiberg said the halt will likely to pass judicial review, leading to a shortage in the coin.

“We believe this order would survive judicial review, which is why this is likely to occur,” Seiberg wrote on Monday. “We worry about this leading to a shortage of pennies, which could force merchants to pay banks more for coins. It also adds legal risk for merchants and banks. That could create the crisis needed to force Congress to act.”

Seiberg said he expects this could support the move toward electronic payments, bolstering companies such as Visa, MasterCard and other real-time payment networks.

What is clear is that pennies cost to make than they are worth. In 2024, the U.S. Mint spent 3.69 cents to manufacture each penny, according to an annual report. That meant the cost of each penny has run above its face value for a 19th straight fiscal year.

The latest U.S. Mint report suggests the nickel better watch its back too. Each five-cent piece costs the Mint 13.78 cents to make.

Finance

More Americans buy groceries with buy now, pay later loans

Published

4 hours ago

April 26, 2025

Business Finance News

People shop for produce at a Walmart in Rosemead, California, on April 11, 2025.

Frederic J. Brown | Afp | Getty Images

A growing number of Americans are using buy now, pay later loans to buy groceries, and more people are paying those bills late, according to new Lending Tree data released Friday.

The figures are the latest indicator that some consumers are cracking under the pressure of an uncertain economy and are having trouble affording essentials such as groceries as they contend with persistent inflation, high interest rates and concerns around tariffs.

In a survey conducted April 2-3 of 2,000 U.S. consumers ages 18 to 79, around half reported having used buy now, pay later services. Of those consumers, 25% of respondents said they were using BNPL loans to buy groceries, up from 14% in 2024 and 21% in 2023, the firm said.

Meanwhile, 41% of respondents said they made a late payment on a BNPL loan in the past year, up from 34% in the year prior, the survey found.

Lending Tree’s chief consumer finance analyst, Matt Schulz, said that of those respondents who said they paid a BNPL bill late, most said it was by no more than a week or so.

“A lot of people are struggling and looking for ways to extend their budget,” Schulz said. “Inflation is still a problem. Interest rates are still really high. There’s a lot of uncertainty around tariffs and other economic issues, and it’s all going to add up to a lot of people looking for ways to extend their budget however they can.”

“For an awful lot of people, that’s going to mean leaning on buy now, pay later loans, for better or for worse,” he said.

He stopped short of calling the results a recession indicator but said conditions are expected to decline further before they get better.

“I do think it’s going to get worse, at least in the short term,” said Schulz. “I don’t know that there’s a whole lot of reason to expect these numbers to get better in the near term.”

The loans, which allow consumers to split up purchases into several smaller payments, are a popular alternative to credit cards because they often don’t charge interest. But consumers can see high fees if they pay late, and they can run into problems if they stack up multiple loans. In Lending Tree’s survey, 60% of BNPL users said they’ve had multiple loans at once, with nearly a fourth saying they have held three or more at once.

“It’s just really important for people to be cautious when they use these things, because even though they can be a really good interest-free tool to help you kind of make it from one paycheck to the next, there’s also a lot of risk in mismanaging it,” said Schulz. “So people should tread lightly.”

Lending Tree’s findings come after Billboard revealed that about 60% of general admission Coachella attendees funded their concert tickets with buy now, pay later loans, sparking a debate on the state of the economy and how consumers are using debt to keep up their lifestyles. A recent announcement from DoorDash that it would begin accepting BNPL financing from Klarna for food deliveries led to widespread mockery and jokes that Americans were struggling so much that they were now being forced to finance cheeseburgers and burritos.

Over the last few years, consumers have held up relatively well, even in the face of persistent inflation and high interest rates, because the job market was strong and wage growth had kept up with inflation — at least for some workers.

Earlier this year, however, large companies including Walmart and Delta Airlines began warning that the dynamic had begun to shift and they were seeing cracks in demand, which was leading to worse-than-expected sales forecasts.