The Treasury Secretary said he hasn’ t decided whether to replace President Andrew Jackson, a Trump favorite, on the $20 bill.
At the time, Mr. Trump mentioned the $2 bill for Tubman. It circulates in the smallest volume of any bill, about seven times less than the $20. “I think it would be more appropriate, ” he said.
Mr. Trump has not addressed the issue since becoming president, but he traveled to Tennessee in March to celebrate Jackson’s 250th birthday. His visit included laying a wreath at the former president’s tomb at The Hermitage, the plantation where Jackson kept more than 100 slaves. Mr. Trump described Jackson’s presidency as a model for his own, portraying Jackson as a populist hero who had fought against government corruption.
“That sounds very familiar, ” Mr. Trump said in brief remarks from the plantation’s portico. “Wait till you see what’s going to be happening pretty soon, folks.”
Mr. Trump also put a portrait of Jackson in the Oval Office.
The Obama administration initially announced that it wanted to put a woman on the $10 bill, but a public outcry against the replacement of Alexander Hamilton, the incumbent frontman, prompted a change in plans. In April 2016, then-Treasury Secretary Jacob J. Lew announced that Jackson would move to the back of the $20 bill. He also said that images of women would be added to the back of the $5 and $10 bills.
Mr. Lew said final designs would be unveiled in 2020, with production starting later in the decade. The government regularly redesigns paper currency to frustrate counterfeiters, but the people honored on the bills have remained the same for nearly a century. Other nations, notably Britain, regularly rotate honorees, though Queen Elizabeth II remains on all the bills.
Mr. Lew was aware when he made the decision to redesign the currency that its fate would rest with Mr. Obama’s successor. But he said then that he doubted it would be reversed.
“I don’ t think somebody’s going to probably want to do that — to take the image of Harriet Tubman off of our money? To take the image of the suffragists off?” he said.
Treasury had earlier removed its “Modern Money” website that the Obama administration created to highlight its plans for the redesigned bills.
Harriet Tubman was born enslaved, escaped to freedom and then returned repeatedly to the part of Maryland where she grew up to lead other slaves to freedom. She served as a Union scout during the Civil War and later become a prominent advocate for giving women the right to vote.
Jackson’s historical legacy is fraught. He was a populist hero, and is still celebrated with Thomas Jefferson as the founding fathers of the Democratic Party. He also orchestrated the removal of Native Americans from lands to the east of the Mississippi River, sending them on the long march West still remembered as the “Trail of Tears.”
And he caused one of the deepest recessions in American history by preventing a new charter for the Second Bank of the United States, a forerunner of the Federal Reserve.
Jackson also strongly opposed the use of paper money.
