What Trump says is not wrong, and because some local municipality has passed ignorant laws is not a reason to keep the penny around or to delay it's removal. Move fast break things I believe is the motto. But for being hacker news there seems to be a lot of stodgy people here when it comes to anything good that Trump wants to do. I suggest you go see what CPG Gray says about it to understand the real problem, which is the problem across lots of government.

Congress has the sole constitutional power to make money and set its value. What Congress did with this power was to abdicate it to the executive branch to determine the amounts thereof of the monies in circulation. So while you might want to scream "orange man is bad" which I do agree there has been several bad decisions, this one is because the absolute failure of Congress to do the job that it was empowered to do by the Constitution.

So put the blame we're blame exists. You get to re-elect a massive portion of those congressmen every two years. So you don't have to wait for the "bad orange man" to leave office. Most of what people cry about that Trump is doing is actually because all they seem to focus on is the president and never about the Congress which has abdicated its power in many places to the executive branch. Because Congress seems to have its sole focus on getting reelected and not actually managing the portions of government that they were empowered to do by the Constitution.

>>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

The corner stores in some poorer communities are losing up to 4 cents a transaction because local (small government) laws that this country values (or valued or pretends to value when their influencers say so; depends on which way the wind blows now I guess).

Laws that dont allow being charged different. They are rounding down, to avoid lawsuits but I would guess it only takes one to cause a stink with that and put the store out of business.

If the corner shops have to close down, thats also those communities “grocery” store. They are not all walking around with smart/iphones/credit cards. Thats where this was shortsighted. Even the article says no one is really asking to bring the penny back.