$70M "vanishes" to print pennies each year as it costs nearly 4Β’ to make 1 penny. (Doesn't actually vanish, some goes to penny maker's pockets* - see reply below)
Does the president really have the power to stop penny printing?
Maybe.
The president is to execute laws passed by congress. Congress passes vague laws.
One example is what coins to print. However, how many to print is left out, just that it should be "the necessary amount"
So Trump decided that the necessary amount was 0.
However, if Congress disagrees with the interpretation, then it goes to the courts.
The courts will ask if there is a precedent.. which for the penny specifically - there isn't really.
Existing precedent is about rarely used speciality / collector coins which previous presidents used the same method to reduce / eliminate production.
So maybe this will kill the penny, but also maybe not. If it does kill the penny, it could set an interesting precedent for future presidents to kill off anything congress hasn't been explicit on.
... I hope all my president / precedents are correct lol.
This won't stop it (had this decision not been reversed already).
Temu (pdd holdings), Shein, mearsk, etc, would all just continue to freight it over in Gaylord's, and then pass it over to UPS or FedEx instead of USPS. At most it'll increase the price slightly on the garbage they send over - but really this just hurts USPS more than anything.
The situation is more complicated than just rejecting packages.
My favorite part might be the conversation on the Cloudflare forum where a user reports the bug that makes this possible and it ends with this:
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I enjoyed this, thanks for posting!