Zimbabwe News Update
bbc
3 min read
US businesses are literally going penniless.Since the Trump administration ended minting the one-cent coins earlier this year, those still in circulation are becoming harder to find. Many stores are now rounding their cash sales down to the nearest five cents, saying there are no federal guidelines on how to proceed.”That adds up really quickly,” said Dylan Jeon, senior director of government relations with the National Retail FederationIn February, President Donald Trump said producing the coin was wasteful and too expensive and called on social media to “rip the waste out of our great nation’s budget, even if it’s a penny at a time”.
The US Mint officially stopped making pennies in May. The Treasury Department estimated shortages would start in early 2026, but they actually came much sooner. Banks can’t get pennies from the federal government, so businesses can’t get them from the banks.”We first heard about the issue in late August, early September,” Mr Jeon said.
“It’s really impacting any business that deals with cash payments.”Now store clerks don’t know what to do when their tills are bare and someone needs change in pennies from a cash purchase.The temporary solution for many, Mr Jeon said, is rounding the price of the sale up or down to the nearest five cents so the customer can use a nickel, the next lowest tender in the US.But some cities, including New York, require retailers to give exact change and others don’t allow cash payments to differ from card payments for the same item, Mr Jeon said.To avoid lawsuits and customer complaints, many retailers have chosen to just round down.”You’re talking about losing up to four cents for every cash transaction across multiple stores across the country,” he said.
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