April wholesale inventories fall 1.4%

Washington Wholesalers slashed inventories more than expected in April, as businesses struggled to get stockpiles in line with falling sales.

The Commerce Department said Tuesday that wholesale inventories fell 1.4% in April, more than the 1.1% decline that economists expected. The drop marked an eight-month decline.

Sales at the wholesale level fell 0.4% in April, following a 2.4% drop in March. Sales by wholesalers have fallen in nine of the last 10 months.

The gross domestic product plunged at an annual rate of 5.7% in the January to March period after falling by 6.1% in the last three months of last year, the largest six-month decline in more than a half-century.