

It’s not bad policy because Trump is doing it. The rationale is sound. The bad part of it is zero guidance was given on how cash businesses (virtually all brick and mortar business) are expected to handle the inability to make exact change in the absence of available pennies, leaving them all to figure it out for themselves.

You can’t just round to the nearest 5¢. Round up, and you end up pissing people off for overcharging them. Round down, and you end up losing money on every sale, which adds up over time with hundreds or thousands of transactions a day.
The grocery stores around me put up signs a month ago asking people to pay in exact change when using cash due to the penny shortage. Without stores able to get more pennies from the banks, this will become a problem in months, not years.