A piece of American history is heading straight for your wallet.
The U.S. Treasury Department confirmed Thursday that President Donald Trump’s signature will appear on U.S. paper currency beginning this summer, a development that breaks with more than two centuries of presidential tradition.
No sitting president has ever signed American money. That changes this year.
The timing is deliberate.
The redesigned bills coincide with the nation’s 250th birthday, the Semiquincentennial, a milestone the Treasury Department is treating as the backdrop for the most significant change to American currency in generations.
Vanity Fair first reported that the $100 bill goes first. Printing kicks off in June, with additional denominations rolling out in the months that follow.
Once the bills leave the Bureau of Engraving and Printing, Americans should expect to wait several weeks before the new notes begin appearing at banks and cash registers across the country.
Two names will anchor the redesigned bills: President Trump’s and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent’s. One name disappears entirely.
For the first time since Abraham Lincoln occupied the White House, the signature of the U.S. Treasurer will not appear on American paper money.
That tradition stretches back to 1861, when the federal government issued currency for the first time. Lynn Malerba, who served as Treasurer under former President Joe Biden, closes out an unbroken 165-year run. Her name, paired with former Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen’s, continues to appear on notes still rolling off government presses, reported Reuters.
Bessent put the move in blunt terms.
“There is no more powerful way to recognize the historic achievements of our great country and President Donald J. Trump than U.S. dollar bills bearing his name, and it is only appropriate that this historic currency be issued at the Semiquincentennial,” he said in a written statement.
Current Treasurer Brandon Beach, whose name never made it onto currency under the previous arrangement, released a statement calling Trump the architect of a “golden age economic revival.”
Malerba, now a private citizen, had nothing to say, said Reuters. Her predecessor in the role, Jovita Carranza, who held the Treasurer post during Trump’s first term, however, had plenty to say. She called the bill redesign “a powerful symbol of American resilience, the enduring strength of free enterprise and the promise of continued greatness.”
Federal statute hands the Treasury Department wide latitude over the design of Federal Reserve notes, authority rooted in the government’s longstanding interest in staying ahead of counterfeiters.
The law locks in certain features — “In God We Trust” stays — and bars portraits of living individuals. Trump’s signature, not his portrait, threads that legal needle.
Everything else about the bills remains the same.
The overall design is untouched.
