While combating the Ebola outbreak currently plaguing Guinea, Liberia, and Sierra Leone remains the absolute priority for these small ECOWAS members, returning to normal will not be business as usual. Along with others, they will have to comply with the Common External Tariff (CET) adopted by the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) which still has an agreed but oft delayed and increasingly unlikely implementation date of January 2015. Secondary as this issue may be right now, the probable welfare effects from the adopted CET—even with the temporary adjustment measures introduced in October 2013 –will be consequential for the small ECOWAS countries if poverty alleviation remains a core goal of ECOWAS states.
