一分钱问题：特朗普总统可以通过社交媒体杀死它吗？

在超级碗中期，唐纳德·特朗普（Donald Trump）总统在社交媒体上发布了他的一分钱。

President Donald Trump recently announced on social media that he was eliminating the penny.

唐纳德·特朗普总统最近在社交媒体上宣布他正在消除一分钱。

The announcement might seem practical at first glance. The lowly penny in 2024 cost about 3.7 cents to make – meaning the government loses money on every coin.

乍看之下，该公告似乎很实际。 2024年的低廉一分钱要花约3.7美分 - 这意味着政府在每枚硬币上都损失了钱。

But does the president have the power to kill off the penny? I’m a business school professor and a longtime advocate for physical money who has written op-eds supporting the penny in The Wall Street Journal and CNN. My forthcoming book, “The Power of Cash,” explores the many advantages of using old-fashioned currency.

但是总统有权杀死一分钱吗？我是一名商学院教授，​​也是一位长期倡导者，他写了在《华尔街日报》和CNN中支持一分钱的专栏文章。我即将出版的书《现金的力量》探讨了使用老式货币的许多优势。

Yet inflation has slashed the value of the penny by a third in just the past decade, and even I now admit that its time is up.

然而，在过去的十年中，通货膨胀已将一分钱的价值削减了三分之一，甚至我现在也承认它的时间已经到了。

But eliminating the penny via a social media post isn’t just legally dubious. It could cause more problems than it solves.

但是，通过社交媒体帖子消除便士不仅在法律上可疑。它可能导致比解决的更多问题。

Critics see the penny as a shining example of government waste. Last year, the U.S. Mint lost $85 million making pennies, according to the bureau’s annual report. It also lost about $18 million minting nickels.

批评者将一分钱视为政府浪费的闪亮例子。根据该局的年度报告，去年，美国造币厂损失了8500万美元的赚钱。它还损失了约1800万美元的铸币镍。

Now, to be clear, just because the mint didn’t make money on pennies or nickels doesn’t mean it’s losing money overall. In 2024, the mint earned a profit of about $100 million making the country’s pocket change. Still, $85 million is no small sum.

现在，明确的是，仅仅因为薄荷没有用便士或镍赚钱并不意味着它总体上损失了钱。 2024年，造币厂赚取了约1亿美元的利润，使该国的口袋更改。尽管如此，8500万美元还是不小。

Meanwhile, public opinion on the penny is split. Some surveys show support for it, but it has plenty of opponents. Many of my students cite carrying around “nuisance coins” like the penny as a reason for switching away from using cash.

同时，关于一分钱的公众舆论被拆分了。一些调查显示了对此的支持，但它有很多对手。我的许多学生都在列出像Penny这样的“滋扰硬币”，这是转而使用现金的原因。

The good news, for those who dislike the penny, is that the coin is disappearing on its own. The U.S. Mint has made about 5 billion pennies annually throughout the 2020s — down from about 11 billion each year in the 1990s. So far in 2025, it has only made about a quarter of a million pennies.

对于那些不喜欢一分钱的人来说，好消息是硬币是自行消失的。在整个2020年代，美国造币厂每年都有约50亿便士，低于1990年代每年约110亿美元。到目前为止，到2025年，它只赚了大约四分之一的便士。

Setting aside people’s feelings toward the penny, the problem with the president’s order, I think, is that only Congress can change the type of coins the mint produces.

我认为，抛开人们对一分钱的感情，总统命令的问题是，只有国会才能改变造币厂产生的硬币类型。

To be fair, some defenders of the president’s order believe his actions are legal. But the U.S. Constitution’s Article 1, Section 8 – which gives Congress the power to do important things like levy taxes, pay debts and declare war – also authorizes Congress “to coin money.”

公平地说，一些总统命令的捍卫者认为他的行为是合法的。但是《美国宪法》第1条第8条赋予了国会征收税款，偿还债务和宣战等重要事情的权力 - 也授权国会“赚钱”。

Now the phrase “to coin money” is vague. To fix that, the United States’ second Congress passed the Coinage Act of 1792, which was signed into law by President George Washington. The act, which lays out how the mint operates and what it produces, says it must produce “Cents – each to be of the value of the one hundredth part of a dollar, and to contain eleven penny-weights of copper.”

现在，“币赚钱”一词含糊不清。为了解决这个问题，美国第二次国会通过了1792年的《造币法》，该法案由乔治·华盛顿总统签署为法律。该法案列出了铸币厂的运作方式及其产生的方式，它说必须产生“美分 - 每种都具有一美元的一百分之一的价值，并包含十一分钱的铜。”

Congress can modify this act anytime it wants – and it has. The 1792 act also required the mint to produce “Half Cents – each to be of the value of half a cent.” These coins were eliminated in 1857 by an act of Congress. Similarly, before 1965, many U.S. coins were made out of silver. After a 1965 congressional amendment to the act passed, they were made out of a cheaper composite.

国会可以随时修改此行为，并且可以修改。 1792年的法案还要求造币厂生产“半美分 - 每人的价值为半美分。”这些硬币在1857年被国会法案淘汰。同样，在1965年之前，许多美国硬币是用银制成的。在1965年对该法案通过的国会修正案之后，它们是由更便宜的复合材料制成的。

And lawmakers have tried several times to eliminate the penny. In 1989, for example, Arizona Rep. Jim Hayes proposed the Price Rounding Act, which called for cash purchases to be rounded to the nearest nickel. It didn’t pass. More recently, in 2017, Republican Senator John McCain introduced the COINS act, which would have eliminated the minting of pennies. The bill also proposed switching the paper one-dollar bill to a metal coin. It, too, didn’t pass.

议员们已经尝试了几次消除一分钱。例如，在1989年，亚利桑那州众议员吉姆·海斯（Jim Hayes）提出了《价格汇总法》，该法案要求将现金购买到最近的镍。它没有通过。最近，在2017年，共和党参议员约翰·麦凯恩（John McCain）提出了《硬币法》，这将消除便士的铸造。该法案还提议将纸张一美元的账单切换为金属硬币。它也没有通过。

Since Congress has failed to eliminate the penny in the past, Trump is trying to do so via a direct order to the Treasury secretary. However, many of Trump’s actions are being challenged in court.

由于国会过去未能消除一分钱，特朗普试图通过直接向财政部长命令这样做。但是，特朗普的许多行动都在法庭上受到挑战。

For the sake of argument, let’s assume no one challenges the order to kill off production of the penny.

为了争论，让我们假设没有人挑战杀死一分钱生产的命令。

A big problem remains. Even if the U.S. stopped making pennies, they’d remain legal tender and people would still need them as change. In simple terms, the supply would change, but not the demand.

仍然存在一个大问题。即使美国停止赚钱，他们也会保持法定招标，人们仍然需要它们作为变化。简而言之，供应会改变，但需求不会改变。

Past efforts to phase out the penny have tried to deal with this problem by requiring rounding, but Trump’s effort doesn’t do this. I think it’s entirely possible that people opposed to Trump would organize national “Demand your penny in change” days in an attempt to embarrass the president.

过去逐步淘汰一分钱的努力试图通过需要舍入来解决这个问题，但特朗普的努力并没有做到这一点。我认为反对特朗普的人们完全有可能组织民族“要求您的一分钱”日子，以使总统感到尴尬。

The U.S. government loses less than $10 million a month m

美国政府每月损失不到1000万美元