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RICHMOND, Va. (AP) — The lowly penny, the forgotten mainstay of coin jars and car cupholders everywhere, may soon be no more.

President Donald Trump announced Sunday he’s ordered his administration to cease production of the 1-cent coin, whose buying power is long past its prime.

Advocates for ditching the penny cite its high production cost — currently almost 4 cents per penny, according to the U.S. Mint — and limited utility. Fans of the penny cite its usefulness in charity drives and relative bargain in production costs compared with the nickel, which costs almost 14 cents to mint.

Trump’s surprise order comes after decades of unsuccessful efforts to pitch the penny.

“Only tradition explains our stubborn attachment to the penny. But sometimes traditions get ridiculous,” the Farmers’ Almanac said in its 1989 edition.

Here’s a look at some questions surrounding Trump’s order.

Yes, according to legal scholar Laurence H. Tribe, the Carl M. Loeb University Professor of Constitutional Law Emeritus at Harvard University.

U.S. code gives the Treasury Secretary the authority to mint and issue coins “in amounts the secretary decides are necessary to meet the needs of the United States.”

If Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent decides the amount necessary for the penny is zero, he’s within his legal rights, Tribe said.

“Unlike a lot of what the new administration has been doing pursuant to the flood of executive orders since Jan. 20, this action seems to me entirely lawful and fully constitutional,” Tribe said, referring to the aggressive executive action Trump’s taken on other issues since taking office.

Congress, which dictates currency specifications like the size and metal content of coins, could make Trump’s order permanent through law. But past congressional efforts to ditch the penny have failed.

Pennies are mostly made of zinc, and the American zinc lobby has been a major opponent to suggestions that the penny be eliminated.

It depends on what you mean by circulation.

Pennies are the most popular coin made by the U.S. Mint, which reported making 3.2 billion of them last year. That’s more than half of all the new coins it made last year.

MIT professor Jeff Gore, who founded Citizens to Retire the Penny, said coins are supposed to stay in circulation for about 30 years and that in the last three decades the U.S. Mint has made about 250 billion pennies.

But, he says, “because nobody wants to use pennies, they fall out of active circulation much faster than other coins.”

If pennies sit in drawer for a decade, Gore asks, “Does that qualify as being in circulation?”

The experience in other countries suggests no.

Canada started phasing out its penny a dozen years ago and urged store owners to round prices to the nearest nickel for cash transactions. Electronic purchases were still billed to the nearest cent. The move came after New Zealand, Australia, the Netherlands, and others dropped their lowest-denomination coins.

After dropping the penny or its equivalent, those countries have not looked back.

Trump's order, which he announced in a social media post as he was departing New Orleans after watching the first half of the Super Bowl, was the latest in his administration's rapid-fire efforts to cut government costs.

“Let’s rip the waste out of our great nation's budget, even if it’s a penny at a time,” Trump wrote in his post, which was light on details about plans for a post-penny future.

After Canada stopped minting new pennies, it began recycling them for their “valuable” copper and zinc, according to a 2022 report from the Canadian Mint.

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Trump administration has ordered the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau to stop nearly all its work, effectively shutting down an agency that was created to protect consumers after the 2008 financial crisis and subprime mortgage-lending scandal.

Russell Vought, the newly installed director of the Office of Management and Budget, directed the CFPB, in a Saturday night email confirmed by The Associated Press, to stop work on proposed rules, to suspend the effective dates on any rules that were finalized but not yet effective, and to stop investigative work and not begin any new investigations. The agency has been a target of conservatives since President Barack Obama pushed to include it in the 2010 financial reform legislation that followed the 2007-2008 financial crisis.

The email also ordered the bureau to “cease all supervision and examination activity.”

On Sunday, administration officials also said that the CFPB's headquarters in Washington, D.C. would be closed the week of Feb. 10 through Feb. 14, according to an email obtained by The Associated Press. No reason was given for closure.

“Employees and contractors are to work remotely unless instructed otherwise,” the email to headquarters workers said.

The order follows similar efforts by the White House to dismantle the U.S. Agency for International Development.

Since the CFPB is a creation of Congress, it would require a separate act of Congress to formally eliminate it. But the head of the agency has discretion over what enforcement actions to take, if any.

Yet Elon Musk commented, “CFPB RIP” on social media site X on Friday. And the CFPB homepage on the Internet was down Sunday, replaced by a message reading “page not found.”

Also late Saturday, Vought said in a social media post that the CFPB would not withdraw its next round of funding from the Federal Reserve, adding that its current reserves of $711.6 million is “excessive." Congress directed the bureau to be funded by the Fed to insulate it from political pressures.

“This spigot, long contributing to CFPB’s unaccountability, is now being turned off,” Vought said on X.

The CFPB says that it has obtained nearly $20 billion in financial relief for U.S. consumers since its founding in the form of canceled debts, compensation, and reduced loans. Last month, the bureau sued Capital One for allegedly misleading consumers about its offerings for high-interest savings accounts — and “cheating” customers out of more than $2 billion in lost interest payments as a result, the bureau said.

Dennis Kelleher, president of Better Markets, an advocacy group, said, “that's why Wall Street’s biggest banks and Trump’s billionaire allies hate the bureau: it’s an effective cop on the finance beat and has stood side-by-side with hundreds of millions of Americans — Republicans and Democrats — battling financial predators, scammers, and crooks.”

The administration's move against the CFPB also highlights the tensions between Trump's more populist promises to lower costs for working-class families and his pledge to reduce government regulation.

During the campaign, Trump said he would cap credit card interest rates at 10%, after they had soared to record levels above 20%, on average, as the Federal Reserve lifted interest rates in 2022 and 2023. The CFPB had started work on how that proposal would be implemented.

The bureau can still take complaints, but it can’t conduct exams or pursue existing investigations, according to a person familiar with the agency who insisted on anonymity to discuss CFPB business. The memo is also interpreted as blocking it from communicating with companies it regulates, consumer advocates or other outside groups.

Musk’s team would also have access to complaints, investigations and regulatory oversight data. The access raises uncomfortable questions if Musk’s company X launches a payments system as the CFPB has data on competitors such as Cash App, the person said.

Vought's email follows a similar directive from Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent Feb. 3 and is the latest move by the Trump administration to rapidly curtail the work of federal agencies that they have deemed excessive.

Obama spearheaded the creation of the bureau in the wake of the 2007-2008 housing bubble and financial crisis, which was caused in part by fraudulent mortgage lending. It was the brainchild of Massachusetts Democratic Sen. Elizabeth Warren and has attracted lawsuits from large banks and financial industry trade associations.

“Vought is giving big banks and giant corporations the green light to scam families," Warren said.

Last week, Warren called on Trump to work with the bureau to protect Americans from de-banking, the practice of banks shutting down customer accounts because they believe they pose financial, legal or reputational risks to the banks.

“I know that the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau is a favorite whipping boy of Republicans on this Committee, but the CFPB is the main agency in our government that is actively working to stop unfair de-banking,” she said at a hearing of the Senate Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs Committee.

Vought's email said that President Donald Trump had made him acting director of the CFPB on Friday. Trump fired the previous director of the bureau, Rohit Chopra, on Feb. 1. Vought was an architect of Project 2025, a policy blueprint for the Trump White House that Trump tried to disavow during last year's campaign.

Under Chopra, the CFPB approved rules to cap overdraft fees by banks, limit junk fees, and has proposed restrictions on data brokers selling personal information such as Social Security numbers.

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AP Writers Josh Boak and Chris Megerian contributed to this report. AP Writer Holly Ramer contributed from Concord, New Hampshire.

ROME (AP) — American importers have been stockpiling Italian bubbly Prosecco as a hedge against the impact of possible European Union tariffs threatened by President Donald Trump, wine industry data show.

U.S. imports of Italian sparkling wine — 90% of that Prosecco — skyrocketed by 41% in November, after Trump's election, far exceeding consumer demand as importers filled the pipeline for future sales, according to the Union of Italian Wines trade association.

“It was quite natural at the end of the year to do extra shipments,” said the trade association president, Lamberto Frescobaldi, given the uncertainty over whether tariffs would hit Italian wines or not — and the likelihood consumers would cut back on such luxuries if tariffs made them too pricey.

“Can we survive without a glass of wine? Yes. Wine is a pleasure,’’ Frescobaldi told The Associated Press this week.

Trump said last weekend that he would impose tariffs “pretty soon” on the EU, but he did not provide any details. He put import tariffs on goods from Mexico and Canada but then delayed them for 30 days. A new tariff on imports from China took effect Tuesday.

Italian wines were not hit by tariffs during the first Trump presidency. Prosecco importers and distributors nevertheless are taking precautionary measures now to protect the market.

Italy exports nearly one-quarter of its wine to the United States, leaving the sector more heavily exposed to possible tariffs than any other Italian export, according to the trade federation. Last year, Italy’s wine exports to the U.S. totaled 1.9 billion euros ($1.97 billion).

Prosecco became the top-selling Italian wine in the United States last year, representing nearly 40% of all sales.

The first signs of market concern showed up even before Trump was elected, with Prosecco shipments to the United States increasing 17% in the first 10 months of 2024. That compares with the single-digit increases in shipments to Britain and Germany, and far outpaced U.S. consumption of Prosecco, which rose just 0.6% in the period.

“It is an important figure that we did not expect,'' said Giancarlo Guidolin, president of Prosecco DOC consortium, the largest of Italy's three Prosecco-producing consortia. ”We think there was an increase of product in the warehouse.''

One other factor in the higher deliveries may have been a threatened port strike in January, said Dina Opici, chairwoman of the Wine & Spirits Wholesalers of America.

“That said, obviously taking into consideration that there could be impending tariffs as well, I think it probably gave people a higher comfort level in making that investment,'' Opici said.

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Silvia Stellaci in Rome and Colleen Barry in Milan contributed to this report.