President Donald Trump seems poised to place his picture on each side of a commemorative $1 coin issued by the USA Mint – the nation’s producer of authorized tender coinage that additionally produces commemorative cash.
On October 3, the White Home re-shared an X put up from US Treasurer Brandon Seaside confirming stories that the Trump administration was in search of to place the president’s picture on the back and front of a greenback coin commemorating the nation’s 250th anniversary.
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US foreign money usually doesn’t characteristic dwelling folks – or sitting presidents – nevertheless it’s not unprecedented.
“There have been occasions prior to now the place commemorative cash have been printed with the faces of dwelling folks,” White Home Nationwide Financial Council chair Kevin Hassett stated on CNN’s State of the Union on October 5.
He’s proper. A number of dwelling folks have been featured on US foreign money in each the latest and distant previous, together with one president.
Though the idea of a Trump coin runs counter to a longstanding custom, there aren’t any unscalable authorized obstacles to establishing a US coin with Trump’s picture on it.
What has the Trump administration proposed?
Seaside’s X put up confirmed the coin’s entrance, that includes Trump’s facet profile, and its flip facet – an illustration of Trump pumping his fist after a 2024 assassination attempt in Butler, Pennsylvania. The phrase, “Struggle Struggle Struggle” strains the coin’s perimeter, referencing a Trump rallying cry repeated after the assassination try. Trump was not president on the time of the assassination try.
At an October 3 White Home press briefing, White Home Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt stated, “I’m undecided if he’s seen it, however I’m certain he’ll find it irresistible.”
Would this design be authorized?
A number of items of coinage laws enacted over the previous few a long time have included particular language banning dwelling folks from being portrayed on US-minted cash. In a single case – a sequence of cash launched in 2007 honouring each president – the regulation’s textual content goes additional to specify that no coin within the sequence could “bear the picture of a dwelling former or present president, or of any deceased former president throughout the two-year interval following the date of the dying of that president”.
That barrier on dwelling presidents was particular to that exact presidential coinage sequence, nonetheless – to not the sequence that would come with the proposed Trump coin.
The steering governing the sequence the Trump administration is contemplating comes from laws authorising a sequence of cash for the nation’s 250th anniversary, referred to as the Circulating Collectible Coin Redesign Act of 2020.
Trump signed the measure into regulation in January 2021, throughout his first presidency, following unanimous passage by each chambers of Congress. It authorises the redesigns of quarters, half {dollars} and $1 cash in a number of sequential sequence, one in all which is a 250th anniversary sequence to be launched in 2026.
The regulation for the 250th sequence refers particularly to the reverse of the coin: “No head and shoulders portrait or bust of any particular person, dwelling or lifeless, and no portrait of a dwelling particular person could also be included within the design on the reverse of any coin” within the sequence. Nevertheless it doesn’t rule out a portrait on the entrance of the coin.
That will not be a excessive bar for Trump to leap if he desires to mint a coin together with his picture on it.
Except Congress acts, the method from right here would contain solely administration officers, that means the president might preserve direct management. Even when the courts had been inclined to dam the proposal, specialists stated it’s unsure whether or not anybody would be capable of cite a direct hurt from producing a Trump coin – a requirement for submitting a lawsuit.
“It’s unclear who would have standing to sue right here,” stated Gabriel Mathy, an affiliate professor of economics at American College in Washington, DC, who has studied coinage points.
Authorized or not, historical past has not favoured utilizing dwelling folks on US foreign money
Whether or not or not a Trump coin can be authorized, numismatic specialists – those that concentrate on cash and associated objects – stated there’s a longstanding custom in the USA of not depicting dwelling folks on cash.
“Not that includes present presidents on cash is a crucial and enduring a part of the USA’ historical past as a republic,” Mathy stated. “Going again hundreds of years, cash historically carried the picture of the present monarch. That is nonetheless the case in the UK, the place cash are minted with the face of the reigning monarch, in addition to in another monarchies.
“The USA was based as a republic, and the founders wished to keep away from making the president right into a monarch,” Mathy stated. Placing a dwelling president on a coin can be “inconsistent with a protracted custom of American republicanism”.
Regardless of the norm, dwelling folks have typically appeared on US foreign money.
President Abraham Lincoln, his Treasury Secretary Salmon P Chase and US Military Common Winfield Scott had been amongst a small variety of dwelling figures to seem on US paper foreign money.
Throughout the Civil Battle, Spencer Clark, an official with the federal workplace chargeable for printing paper cash, put his personal picture on a five-cent word. He did it by leveraging a authorized loophole: Congress had accredited a word that includes a picture of William Clark, the explorer from the Lewis & Clark expedition of the Louisiana Territory, however lawmakers uncared for to specify William Clark’s first title within the laws, journalist Blake Stilwell wrote in Navy.com.
So Spencer Clark, having the identical surname, inserted his personal picture as an alternative of William Clark’s. Clark additionally produced a separate word that featured then-US Treasurer Francis E Spinner.
By the Civil Battle’s finish, “Congress had time to concentrate to what the Bureau of Engraving and Printing was as much as,” Stilwell wrote.
So in 1866, Congress handed a regulation saying no portrait or likeness of a dwelling particular person would seem on “bonds, securities, notes, fractional or postal foreign money of the USA”.
The regulation doesn’t point out cash, nonetheless. Residing figures – and even one dwelling president, Calvin Coolidge – have often been featured on cash, together with some lately.
In 1921, the US launched a commemorative coin to mark Alabama’s centennial, that includes facet views of William Bibb, the state’s first governor, and Thomas Kilby, its governor throughout the centennial. “This coin was the primary ever created by the Mint to hold a dwelling particular person’s portrait,” the Mint’s web site says.
In 1926, throughout the nation’s sesquicentennial celebration, Congress authorised the minting of a commemorative coin. The designers settled on a joint portrait of George Washington and Coolidge, who was president throughout the sesquicentennial.
The coin proved unpopular; of 1 million half {dollars} that had been minted, greater than 850,000 had been returned to the Mint and melted.
The opposite two examples we might discover of a dwelling determine minted on cash are newer.
The Mint created a congressionally authorised coin to commemorate the 1995 Particular Olympics World Video games. Congress didn’t dictate the design, however the entrance of the coin featured Eunice Kennedy Shriver, who based the Particular Olympics for folks with mental disabilities. She died in 2009.
On February 6, 2016, the Mint launched a congressionally authorised coin for former President Ronald Reagan and former First Girl Nancy Reagan, tied to the late president’s one hundred and fifth birthday. Nancy Reagan died one month later, on March 6, 2016.
A rustic has already minted a coin with Trump’s picture on it
In 2025, the West African nation of Liberia produced a $1, one-ounce silver commemorative coin with Trump’s picture on the entrance, topped by a laurel leaf in gold as if he had been a Roman emperor. The motto learn, “In Don We Belief.”
If you could find one in inventory, it could price about $150 to $200, in accordance with Google searches.
