Reducing the nation’s corporate tax rate is key to the growth the country needs to experience in the near future, said U.S. Sen. Richard Burr (R-N.C.), as he spoke to business leaders Friday in downtown Wilmington.

“I hope that we’re not going to miss the opportunity, either in the lame duck session between the election and Christmas or shortly after we get back next year, to have a massive corporate tax reduction in this country to 25 percent,” he said, in a speech at the Wilmington Chamber of Commerce about the U.S. and state economy.

Burr said lawmakers have details to work out before the reduction can take place in areas that include the cost to companies of health care and retirement plans.

Evidence of the success of corporate tax rate cuts can be found in other countries, he said, particularly in the United Kingdom, where the rate will be 20 percent as of April 2015.

“Corporate tax rates do matter from the standpoint of a competitive global market,” Burr said.

He pointed to lower energy costs as an advantage on which the U.S. should capitalize.

“It’s cheaper to manufacture in the United States right now than it is in any country in the world ... in large measure because of energy costs,” Burr said.

He said he hopes the U.S. will explore and open more opportunities for the production of natural gas, which costs less here.

“We should be exporting liquefied natural gas to Europe and taking Russia out of the equation,” Burr said. “This is not just economics. This is geopolitical.”

Access to cheaper natural gas will attract companies basing their investment decisions on certainties, he said, such as the long-term availability of natural gas versus having to go back to coal, for example.

“There’s no way you wouldn’t build natural gas generation facilities. It just makes common sense,” Burr said.

Focusing on North Carolina, Burr said among the state’s advantages are its community colleges and four-year public and private higher education institutions, which are second only to California in producing the largest pool of higher education graduates in the U.S., he said.

“We’re one of the few states that can guarantee them [companies] that we’re going to generate the talent they need 20 or 30 years down the road, that that investment they made isn’t going to be a failure because they couldn’t meet the needs of the future,” Burr said.

America as a whole, he said, needs to be in a position to attract global capital, which is “what builds plants and buys equipment and creates jobs,” he said.