FOREX-Dollar rallies broadly after retail sales data

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* Dollar gains on retail sales ex-autos, import price data

* Data supports views Fed will not cut rates in June

By Vivianne Rodrigues

NEW YORK, May 13 (Reuters) - The U.S. dollar rallied broadly on Tuesday after a report on April retail sales beat forecasts and supported views that the Federal Reserve will probably stop cutting interest rates next month.

Retail sales, excluding the hard-pressed autos sector, increased 0.5 percent, more than double the increase that economists had forecast. That followed a 0.4 percent pickup in March, suggesting that the U.S. consumer remained resilient despite the housing market rout.

The reading bolstered the dollar as consumer spending accounts for about two-thirds of the U.S. economy.

"The U.S. consumer is out there and still spending," said Kurt Karl, a U.S. chief economist at Swiss Re in New York. "As for the Fed, given the recent data, it wouldn't be a bad thing to stop for a while at 2 percent."

The euro dropped earlier to a session low of $1.5431 <EUR=>. In late trading, it was down 0.4 percent at $1.5479. The New York Board of Trade's dollar index, which tracks the dollar's performance against a basket of currencies, rose 0.4 percent to 73.246 .DXY.