The Treasury Department is winding down the production of pennies, after ordering a last batch of the blanks used to print the coins this month.

The end of penny production comes a few months after President Donald Trump ordered the Treasury Department to stop producing them as a cost-saving measure, pointing out that pennies have long been more expensive to manufacture than they are worth.

Pennies, which are made up of 97.5% zinc and 2.5% copper plating, cost about 3.69 cents to make, according to Treasury Department statistics, which show the price of production skyrocketed over the last decade. Ten years ago, it cost 1.3 cents to manufacture each penny. In the 2024 fiscal year alone, the cost of production rose by over 20%.

The U.S. Mint will keep manufacturing pennies until its supply of blanks runs out, a Treasury spokesperson said Thursday. The Mint has estimated that ceasing production of the penny will save the taxpayers an annual $56 million in reduced material costs.

The Treasury forecasts that there will be additional savings once the facilities used to produce pennies are converted for other purposes.

The penny had been falling out of favor for years, and as it became less popular, the Mint scaled down its production. Penny production has fallen fairly steadily in the past decade, from over 9.36 billion coins made in 2015 to just over 3.22 billion last year.

There are still about 114 billion pennies in circulation, according to the Treasury. But eventually, once production ceases, there will not be enough of them in circulation to facilitate day-to-day transactions, meaning businesses that deal in cash may have to round prices to the nearest nickel.

While the Treasury hasn’t indicated that nickels are going anywhere, they aren’t exactly cheap to produce, either.

Minnesota joins suit over Trump’s tariffs

Minnesota and 11 other states on Wednesday urged a federal court to strike down President Donald Trump’s sweeping taxes on imports, saying he had exceeded his authority, left U.S. trade policy dependent on his whims and unleashed economic chaos.

They are challenging tariffs that Trump imposed last month on most of the countries in the world in an effort to reverse America’s massive and longstanding trade deficits. They are also targeting levies the president had earlier plastered on imports from Canada, China and Mexico to combat the illegal flow of immigrants and the synthetic opioids across the U.S. border.

A three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of International Trade in New York on Wednesday heard arguments in the states’ case. Last week, the trade court held a hearing in a similar challenge to Trump’s tariffs brought by five small businesses.

The court specifically deals with civil lawsuits involving international trade. Its decisions can be appealed to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit in Washington and ultimately to the Supreme Court, where the legal challenges to Trump’ tariffs are widely expected to end up.

At least seven lawsuits are challenging the levies, the centerpiece of Trump’s trade policy.

FTC reverses lawsuit over PepsiCo pricing

The Republican-controlled Federal Trade Commission voted Thursday to dismiss a lawsuit against PepsiCo that the previous commission filed in the waning days of the Biden administration.

The lawsuit, filed in January, alleged that PepsiCo was giving unfair price advantages to Walmart at the expense of other vendors and consumers. The lawsuit had relied on the rarely enforced 1936 Robinson-Patman Act, which it said prohibits companies from using promotional incentive payments to favor large customers over smaller ones.

When the lawsuit was filed, Democrat Lina Khan was the FTC’s chairwoman, and she was joined in support of the lawsuit by Democratic Commissioners Rebecca Slaughter and Alvaro Bedoya. At the time, Republican Commissioners Andrew Ferguson and Melissa Holyoak dissented.

A few days after the lawsuit was filed, President Donald Trump took office and Khan resigned. Trump fired Bedoya and Slaughter in March. Bedoya and Slaughter have sued the Trump administration, saying their removal was illegal.

U.S. jobless claims dipped last week

The number of Americans filing unemployment claims last week fell slightly as businesses continue to retain employees despite growing economic uncertainty over U.S. trade policy.

Applications for jobless benefits fell by 2,000 to 227,000 for the week ending May 17, the Labor Department said Thursday. That’s pretty close to the 230,000 new applications analysts forecast.

Weekly applications for jobless benefits are seen as representative of U.S. layoffs and have mostly bounced around a historically healthy range between 200,000 and 250,000 since COVID-19 ravaged the economy and wiped out millions of jobs five years ago.

U.S. existing home sales fell in April

Sales of previously occupied U.S. homes fell in April, as elevated mortgage rates and rising prices discouraged prospective homebuyers during what’s traditionally the busiest time of the year for the housing market.

Existing home sales dropped 0.5% last month, from March, to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 4 million units, the National Association of Realtors said Thursday. The sales decline marks the slowest sales pace for the month of April going back to 2009 in the wake of the U.S. housing crisis. March’s sales pace was also the slowest for that month going back to 2009.

Sales fell 2% compared with April last year. The latest home sales fell slightly short of the 4.10 million pace economists were expecting, according to FactSet.

Average 30-year mortgage rate climbs

The average rate on a 30-year mortgage in the U.S. climbed this week to its highest level since mid-February, a setback for home shoppers that threatens to slow sales further this spring homebuying season.

The rate increased to 6.86% from 6.81% last week, mortgage buyer Freddie Mac said Thursday. A year ago, the rate averaged 6.94%.

Borrowing costs on 15-year fixed-rate mortgages, popular with homeowners refinancing their home loans, also rose. The average rate ticked up to 6.01% from 5.92% last week. It’s down from 6.24% a year ago, Freddie Mac said.

JBS grants pension plan to 26K workers

U.S. meatpacking workers are getting their first new pension plan in nearly 40 years under a contract agreement between JBS, one of the world’s largest meat companies, and an American labor union.

The United Food and Commercial Workers union said Thursday that 26,000 meatpacking workers at 14 JBS facilities would be eligible for the pension plan. The new contract, which was ratified by workers this week, also adds paid sick leave, wage increases and new plant safety measures.

“This contract, everything that was achieved, really starts to paint the picture of what everybody would like to have: long-term stable jobs that are a benefit for the employees, a benefit for the employers and a benefit for the community they operate in,” said Mark Lauritsen, the head of the UFCW’s meatpacking and food processing division.

Brazil-based JBS said the pension plan reflected its commitment to its workforce and the rural communities in which it operates.

— News service reports